CHECK OUT OFFLINE SURVEY PRODUCT, “CUSTOMER WALLET”
Safaricom and mSurvey in Kenya have collaborated and launched a product they call a Consumer Wallet. The Consumer Wallet is the first platform of its kind, quantifying offline consumer spending habits and trends. Over time, the platform will be able to measure Kenya’s cash economy and give businesses, entrepreneurs and investors insights on the spending habits of consumers when they do not make purchases over the internet. To find out more about this groundbreaking technology, read further.
Safaricom’s M-PESA is a service that has revolutionized the finance market in countries all over East Africa, including Kenya. Despite this, many consumers in the country remain cash dependent. These cash-based transactions are difficult to quantify. Hence, the lack of information on consumers spending habits makes it difficult for businesses to know the behavior of their customers and cater to them accordingly. This is where the need for a product such as Consumer Wallet comes in.
The platform is made possible by Safaricom’s partnership with mSurvey. mSurvey is the only mobile-first research platform in the world. The company accesses big data in the emerging world through a technology that leverages SMS and mobile messaging. The Consumer Wallet data feed uses mSurvey’s mobile messaging platform. The Consumer Wallet platform makes it possible for the collection of scalable and measurable information from individual consumers daily. To collect this information, easy to answer questions on spending behavior are sent as SMS to individuals and, their answers collected as data.
With the data from Consumer Wallet, tracked and analyzed daily, businesses in Kenya will be empowered with information on the evolution of consumer choices over time. Prior to the invention of the service, gathering market research was cumbersome and prone to error because it required manual labor and in-person questionnaires. But, this service would make it possible for companies to build sales models and predict future trends in consumption. With the invention in its beta testing stage, it is our hope that it will launch successfully and expand to other countries. What are your takes on the product? Let us know in the comments below.
