The design and impact of a marketing training to strengthen customer value creation among Ethiopian pastoralists

Abstract

As the world population is expected to expand beyond 9 billion by 2050, food production will need to increase by approximately 70% to feed the population. Furthermore, a growing part of that expanding population pertains to an upcoming middle class, leading to an increasing demand for high-value products, animal protein and safer food. To respond to this growing demand in terms of quantity and quality, supply chains are pushing market-frontiers deeper into the rural areas in developing and emerging markets to secure their supplies. As a consequence, rural smallholders including pastoralists, who have been functioning at local markets, are increasingly integrating with international markets. While such integration opens opportunities for the smallholders to access higher purchasing power, it is difficult for remote and isolated pastoralists with limited productive resources and limited institutional support to recognize and seize the opportunities. Because pastoralists are mostly isolated from the other value chain members, they have not developed the knowledge regarding how the market functions and what the value chain members want. By conducting a field experiment among a group of Ethiopian pastoralists, this thesis shows that marketing training is an important approach in enhancing the market knowledge of pastoralists that enable them to understand the market environment, to reproduce their animals as per market requirements and to generate returns. The thesis also has implications for other rural smallholders that share similar characteristics with the pastoralists.