Product Marketing and Distribution

Futures Group’s overarching strategy in product marketing, sales, and distribution is to develop sustained behavior change through customer satisfaction in a robust, responsive national market that ensures widely available and accepted products demanded by consumers. Strategies supporting this goal include:

• Generating substantial consumer demand by positioning information, products, and services as a “health value”

• Ensuring widespread availability and access with aggressive, but cost-effective, distribution, especially to remote areas, building on existing local distribution channels

• Creating innovative IEC/BCC campaigns that are culturally appropriate and have broad appeal to target groups and family and or other community influencers

Under the COMPRI-A Project, Futures Group is marketing a variety of health products and working to establish a local, Afghan-owned and managed not-for-profit social marketing organization that will continue to support a private sector network of product promoters and distributors. We have also worked with an Indian company to help a local Afghan pharmaceutical company attain ISO 9001:2008 management and quality certification for its operations. Direct investment in the company and targeted management technical assistance led to Afghan manufacture of two of the project’s products—oral rehydration salts (Sheefa) and chlorinated water treatment solution (Abhakon)—directly benefiting Afghans with affordable, quality products and indirectly contributing to the country’s overall economic growth.

Under the AFFORD project, Futures Group is responsible for marketing and distribution in Uganda of anti-malarial, zinc, water solution, family planning, and reproductive health products. AFFORD promotes positive health behavior changes among key target groups through innovative communications and widespread access through the private sector to affordable, high-quality products and services. Futures Group trained over 2,000 private practitioners on artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) under the new malaria treatment policy and supported the launch and promotion of two private sector ACT brands manufactured by two Ugandan companies. AFFORD is also establishing a sustainable health marketing organization, the Uganda Health Marketing Group.