Sanitation marketing lessons from Cambodia : a market-based approach to delivering sanitation

Sanitation Marketing is an approach that aims to increase demand for sanitation and to strengthen private sector capacity to supply sanitation products and services. The focus on the private sector and a view of households as consumers rather than beneficiaries is what sets sanitation marketing apart from conventional approaches to sanitation service provision. The WSP-supported Sanitation Marketing Pilot Project is one of a range of sanitation marketing initiatives applying the sanitation marketing approach to the rural Cambodian context. The project designed a new affordable pour-flush latrine package (the ‘Easy Latrine’), trained local enterprises to profitably produce and sell it, and developed sales and promotional strategies to increase consumer demand. In less than two years, households from four provinces purchased a total of 10,621 unsubsidized Easy Latrines from local private enterprises. In 601 monitored villages, there was a 7.7 percentage point increase in improved sanitation coverage from a baseline of 24%, which is six times higher than the background rate of increase. Thus, a significant and rapid increase in durable latrine coverage could be achieved without the use of any hardware subsidies. While these results are promising, there were also a number of limitations to the pilot approach. Enterprises were able to sell the Easy Latrine to a first group of households with latent demand (the ‘early adopters’), but showed little evidence of penetration beyond this market segment. Rather than developing more effective sales and promotional strategies or complementary interventions to deepen market penetration, the project expanded its target area to support enterprises in their sales effort. This ‘wide, but shallow’ penetration left the majority without latrines. The pilot highlights the need for more effective sales and marketing strategies, complementary finance options for households, and more attention to the role of local government in creating a supportive environment for the market to flourish. [authors abstract]