The latest market share research indicates Ariel is the top detergent brand in kenya.

How could we ? How do you walk to a supermarket, choose a foreign brand over our homegrown guided by nothing else apart from an aggressive marketing campaign ? Are we really that cheap and easy to confuse, sorry, convince.

Then sit down and complain about youth unemployment ! ! !

Its basic economics. There is a wazuan who had a beautiful tagline about producing what you consume and consuming what we produce.

In my household, the only imported brand allowed is pampers.

When reckitt closed their Kenyan operations, I dropped their brands I.e. dettol, jik and harpic. Even the fact that they outsource some of the manufacturing locally to orion chemicals was not good enough for me. Roberts and ace were my natural choices.

Damn Kenyans and their poor choices.

We should learn to support our young economy where it matters.

Colgate-palmolive closed their branch here under the pretext that our production costs were too high. That's the last time I used their products I.e. Colgate, axion e.t.c

If we can become fiercely loyal to locally made products, i believe everyone would feel the trickle-down effects of a growing economy.

While at it, everyone should be using saj or flamingo ceramic tiles and not those ugly chinese made ones.

Don't know much about burning hands. All I know is that if I buy Ariel, then I shouldn't complain if my younger brother remains jobless because I will have created a job in Egypt.

Homegrown??
Most people believe that Omo is a local brand. Omo is as foreign as Ariel. Just because we used 504s for a long time doesn't mean we should not buy better more efficient Toyotas. Omo has failed somewhere hence the punishment by consumers.

As mentioned, Omo is very strong. My Domestic manager (househelp) says it burns her hands. We have now moved to sunlight powder. Sunlight is also cheaper than omo.

Utility overrides patriotism while making my shopping decision.

My defn of local is simply where the manufacturing plant is located. Hope the good people at Unilever can hear the complaints about quality. But for the love of our crawling economy, please buy sunlight not Ariel.

Good point. But when you have a reasonable alternative that is locally manufactured, please settle for it. Its much helpful than voting.

I think it will be hard to move people from Ariel. If you go to the mtumba/2nd hand boutique sellers they all tell you they use Arial because it cleans and brightens at the same time. That's a big market and they are the reason why Arial is up there. Now ask the mamas who go around estates washing clothes for bachelors especially. Guys buy what they are told and those mamas recommend Ariel. It's sad that Kenyans may lose jobs but these are the consequences that come with the global market.
Another brand in foreseeable danger is Tusker. The brand is not growing but Heineken is experiencing massive growth in consumer numbers.

P & G