Mobile phones and marketing
Hello everyone, I teach at one of our public universities, but I am a livestock farmer in addition. During my routine consultation/informal meetings with (subsistence) farmers in my own village and surrounding villages, I am always confronted with people, on one hand, wanting information regarding availability of commodities or services, .e., who is selling his in-calf heifer, broilers, bull-calf, or who has a good breeding boar or bull in the village or neighbourhood, or where can I find the nearest vet or Artificial Insemination Service? On the hand, I face such questions as: "do you know anyone who would like to buy piglets? I have several of them.", or "my broilers have reached market weight, would you know anyone who wants broilers?", or "if I rear rabbits, will I have a market for them?", etc., etc. The problem is, by the time I find someone who has a bull-calf to sell, I have already forgotten who wanted to buy this animal in the first place! Clearly this indicated to me that they is lack of proper information flow between between would-be sellers and would-be buyers of products and services. So, an idea came to mind and wondered whether mobile phones would not come in handy to help solve this problem. Like the situation elsewhere in the developing world, almost all the farmers I have come across have mobile phones, or at least can afford one. This is where I would need help from fellow participants who have expertise in this area. My questions: Does my idea make some sense? Can some form of a "data base" with information regarding advertising, or inquiring about, availability products and services be set up which can be easily accessed using mobile phones? Such data base could cover a particular village, sub-county, or district, depending on the administrative units of a particular country. How could mobile-phone service providers come in in such a venture? How else could this issue be approached?
Hi Grace Yes, it does make a sense. You are referring to the information asymmetry; some people have products and services to be sold but do not know where to sell, But some others Want to buy products and services, but do not know from where they can buy. This information gap leads to high transaction costs. Sure, mobile phones can do something, but not alone, they have to be driven by active institutions who deal with farmers. Sameera.
Grace. I have been exploring marketplace systems that do what you're describing. These are doable but you need more than the mobile phone to implement it. Sameera's also right, such a solution requires institutional support. Let's have a chat and see what solution we can develop. Cheerio, Hellene
Hi Grace, Are you aware of [url=http://www.tradenet.biz/]TradeNet[/url], [url=http://www.drumnet.org/]DrumNet[/url], Manobi's [url=http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/data/mulimedia_market_informat]Time to Market[/url] and Kenya's [url=http://www.kacekenya.com/]KACE[/url]? These may give you some ideas on what's possible. Some of these groups are likely to be interested in expanding their reach to your area. Héléne Martin [email protected]
Hi Helene, Do you know anything about the current status of DrumNet? On paper it looked like a very interesting system/approach but the website you point to and other information about the project is now somewhat out of date. We tried to find out more about activity in one area they did have an information centre about 2 years ago and could find nothing and we met someone from DrumNet. It does not look like they have so far been successful but I may be wrong. I would love to know more about their current activity, if they have been successful and if not why not?
Hi Sameera, Thanks for the encouraging words. I am sure we will have much more to discuss about this issue. Cheers!
Hallo Hellene, Thanks for the reply. We surely have more to discuss on this interesting topic, and I am looking forward to it.
Dear Helene, Many thanks for links. I have checked them out and are certainly worth following up. Cheers
Hi there! From a swedish perspective thre have been many different trials of applications through the years, but a (from a user perspective) functional e-market acceccible for supply and demand requires a combination of mobile and web technology, thus often requiring top end infrastructure. Other options are including possible voice requests and getting voice responses (trial used for registration of new born calfes, a requisit for every european farmer) which may turn out cheaper adn more functional than sms. Voice recognition as an interface to the database seems to me a very important tool to reach end user "appropriate technology" regardless of geography! Today the Swedish e-marketplaces on the web are often accessible from a mobile phone. Different applications for local weather reports (for instance to get important info on winds when planning a pesticide application) are also available, but end users seem reluctant to use the services, possibly because they simply do not know how to configure the settings in their own cell phone to allow them to access the web. Nota bene - they are not to blame! Anyone introducing such a service must ensure easy access, otherwise investments should not be done at all!
Hi Grace and Helene Thanks for the deliberation, i would like to point your interest to yet another project, Infotrade that was launched by FIT Uganda on 17th June 2008, it trying to do that ,currently they are collecting commodities from 15 districts , 3 times a week and publishing twice a week via email , to a total of 2400 email subsibers ( free) . the company has obtain a SMS code 8555 to transmit some of the information via SMS and its has also have it website constructed / designed to accomodate SMS and Web communication that can transmit SMS alert on the best offers placed on the site. the website is underconstruction but you can view some of the developments. FIT Uganda welcomes comments and suggest to make the site user friendly. www.infotradeuganda.com The unique aspect about Infotrade is the their defination of Agricultural Market Information , that enables the users to make interesting market or trading decision. for any tools to be used as channel of communication, one has to have the relevant content to support it conitunity and sustainability.
Dear Grace, when I read your question I thought immediately about CellBazar (http://www.cellbazaar.com), a fascinating initiative from Bangladesh, where mobile phone users can send small advertisements to a website to find sellers. You can add and receive them via SMS. As you can see on the website it is used for all kind of products. Here is an article on mobile active about it: http://mobileactive.org/cellbazaar-sms-marketplace-bangladesh I personally find it very interesting, because the users contribute themselves the content. So it is many to many communication and not from one to many. Imagine that with different kind of information exchange on a peer-to-peer basis. Hope that is interesting. :-) Christian Best regards Christian