Thursday, June 20, 2013

You Can Lead a Person to Water, But Will They Purify It?

I was intrigued by a story on NPR this morning titled A Surprising Barrier to Clean Water: Human Nature. The story was about Innovations for Poverty Actions' efforts in Kenya to encourage people to purify their water. Most water comes from springs or wells, and it is contaminated. The co-creation of value story here encouraging Kenyans to add a few drops of chlorine to their water containers. The first design was to sell chlorine cheap at stores ($0.30 per month) with a social marketing and communication campaign. Adoption was very limited. The next design was to place chlorine dispensers next to the well or spring. 61% of water in Kenyan's homes tested positive for chlorine treatment, compared to 8% for a treatment group. A good trend.

From a customer performance perspective, the designers were primarily manipulating the Access component of the coproduction experience model by providing the tool (chlorine and its dispensers) and manipulating the interface (how and where it is dispensed). They also manipulated Incentive (making chlorine free). I assume that there is some customer education in the mix as well (it is not discussed in the project details I found), and the Vision, well, is self-evident: better health for kids and fewer deaths. You would think that would be enough for 99.9% adoption.


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