Marketing Timed Quiz!

Herein we portray an effort to apply the technology to develop a new stove to be used in urban slums and rural villages in Africa. The problems are twofold in low-income areas in both regions:

(1) traditional cooking methods produce large amounts of unhealthful smoke in homes

(2) traditional open fires are substantial community fire hazards, particularly in densely populated slums.

In Africa and around the world, one of the greatest risks of living in transitional areas (slums) in big cities is the danger of wildfires, often started by careless cooking methods using open fires.

In the Philips Design laboratories in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, two new models of smokeless wood stoves were designed: a forced air model and a natural draft model. Both stoves save large amounts of fuel compared with traditional open fires. They also reduce the amount of smoke produced during cooking by injecting air into the top of the combustion chamber. This causes the smoke, which is essentially unburned fuel, to continue burning.

A Philips Design engineer perfects the technology and efficiency of the stove producing one kind of quality, the engineering sort.

In Africa, as in India, cattle dung is an important source of fuel.

Fuel can be hard to find and hard to transport. Cutting the time and effort spent by as much as 80 percent in rural areas would allow for other productive activities for both women and children, as well as promote personal safety for both groups. In addition to dung and wood, corn cobs and charcoal can be used as fuel.

The Product

Here you can see the inside design of the stove. This is the forced air version, using a battery-powered fan to draw air into the top of the flame through the hollow sides of the stove. The forced air model pictured burns at a very high temperature. To contain the heat properly, a ceramic-walled combustion chamber must be used for safety and to ensure a long economic life.

Local UNDC personnel help make introductions to rural villagers in Lesotho. Philips makes it a practice to collaborate on almost all R&D projects with organizations around the world: private, public, and NGOs. As one executive put it, “We have smart people at Philips, but we don't have all the smart people.”

The stoves use 80 percent less fuel and thereby yield four additional advantages:

(1) less time is spent looking for and transporting fuel;

(2) more time becomes available for other useful activity, such as micro-industry or school;

(3) deforestation is reduced dramatically; and

(4) CO2 emissions are cut as significantly as fuel consumption.

Careful design in the laboratory is never good enough though. Field testing is crucial. Philips collaborated with a variety of organizations in the product to perform the field testing: the people and government of Lesotho, the EU delegation to Lesotho, the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) of South Africa, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

Before the actual field testing, the stoves were demonstrated to a variety of officials, including the Prime Minister of Lesotho; the Ministers of Trade, Health, Energy, and Natural Resources; the Director General of UNIDO; local NGOs; and local village leaders.

The field trial report notes the complaints, but the response is overwhelmingly positive. Indeed, the stoves when widely distributed will ultimately sell for around $10. When the field test users were asked at what price they would sell their stoves back to Philips, they responded on average $25–$60.

Here stoves are distributed by the Philips field team to potential users in a rural village. The stoves are free, so everybody is happy.

The team observes the villagers using the stove. You can see the traditional open-fire arrangement on the left—imagine the smoke produced!

This woman has a solar panel on her house that provides a modicum of electricity for lights and charging a cell phone and/or the battery on the forced air version of the stove pictured.

The entire village received stoves.

A researcher interviews the users about their experiences with the stoves. Almost all of the comments were positive. But some complaints were voiced as well. Representative examples included:

“The stoves should be bigger, in order to carry bigger pots,”

“it is difficult to add fuel when using a big pot,”

“the pots get black,”

“one needs to stay with the stove to add fuel,”

“only one pot can cook at a time,” and

“the natural draft stove fills up with ash when cooking for a long time.”