ADVERTISER’S
FEATURE
SPOTLIGHT
Consumer choices
lubricants survey – GFK
T
he Research industry in Kenya has been known more for
the Opinion polls that seem to elicit as much support as
criticism depending on what side of the political divide is
favoured by the opinion polls results. Obviously, Lubezine
is not changing its core focus from Lubricants business
into politics! However, our interest was attracted to
this particular firm due to a unique research project that they have
started in Nairobi focusing on the Lubes business. We caught up the
Managing Director, Mr. John Muthee (pictured left) to give
us more insight into this one-of-a-kind industry survey.
1. Briefly tell us who GFK is.
GfK is one of the world’s largest research
companies. 11,500 GfK experts are working
to discover new insights about the way people
live, think and shop, in over 100 markets,
every day. We are constantly innovating to
use the latest technologies and the smartest
methodologies to give clients the clearest
understanding of the most important people
in the world: their customers. That knowledge empowers GfK’s clients to make the
right decisions, and position their businesses
for the future.
GfK is an acronym that stands for Growth
from Knowledge and has its Headquarters
based in Germany. We are proud of our
German heritage and are proud to bring to
Kenya “Research Made in Germany!”
In Kenya, we have been present since 2006
from our Southern Africa office. In 2010, we
set up a fully-fledged office handling research
in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia.
2. What is GfK’s scope of Research in
Kenya?
GfK in Kenya was set up to with a focus on
tracking sales of electronic consumer goods
from Retail outlets. These products include
Mobile phone handsets, TVs, Refrigeration
and IT equipment. This research was driven
by multinational companies manufacturing
the above products.
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In 2012, we made a conscious decision to
start tracking products that would address the
needs of the local industries. We approached
some players in these sectors and undertook
to understand whether there were any information gaps that existed that GfK had the
capacity to address. After a series of meetings
we selected Paints, Cement, Tyres and Lubricants and sectors that had information gaps
that we had the capacity to address locally.
In February and March of this year, we
undertook a study to understand the product
flow of the above products from the manufacturers to the end consumers and identified
channels that we believed that the largest
gaps existed.
Interestingly, we found out that there were
no universally agreed upon facts with regards
Lubezine Magazine | July-September 2012