Competitiveness of a Product Based on Its Package: A Case Study of Tanzanian Local Consumer Products

Abstract

Industrialization is a holistic notion as it is not relying on a single factor e.g. foreign investments or availability of resources. The holistic nature of the notion is in the sense that it requires integration of multiple entities such as technology, policies, market assurance, product competitiveness etc. just to mention as a few to actualize it. It has been noticed that most of the local producers ignore the very substantial part of packaging which is a marketing tool when it comes to selling a product. This results to poor performance of the product in the market. Following this, a research was conducted based on the local consumer products (cocoa, peanut butter, cashew nuts & tea bags) to assess and inspect the way packaging was done on different products in the supermarkets located in Dar es Salaam. The assessment was based on two groups of packaging aspects that includes structural elements and graphical elements of packaging. Structural elements composed of packaging material and wrapper design whereas graphical elements composed of label and images on the package. These elements were assessed on a particular product by considering at least two criteria under each element. Weighted average as a statistical tool was employed in which a weighting factor was assigned on each criteria which add up to 1 which is then multiplied by the score of each product and finally average was computed under each product to see whether the product is competitive or not. The results revealed that on the case of structural elements of packaging among the assessed products, it revealed that peanut butter products has the highest score (97.3%) as its packaging material is robust and appropriate while tea bags has the least score (57%) in which the package is slightly not compacted and the material is somehow light which might lead to easy penetration of foreign materials. These prompt some improvements to be done on the said product to increase its competitiveness. Graphical elements on the other hands revealed that tea bags has the highest score (78.1%) as its image and labels were done effectively and color combination and representation were okay. In the same regard, Cashew nuts had the least score (49.8%). Labels and images were not done effectively and color of the product wasn’t there at all. Improvements needs to be done on the way local producers are packaging their cashew nuts to secure their position in the market internally as well as externally.