[Stoves] Stove costs

Marc Pare mpare at gatech.edu
Sat Nov 19 23:13:52 CST 2011


To add to the idea about perceived value that Cecil and Crispin started --

One of the most eye-opening readings on the topic for me was the
publication "Cookstove and Markets: Experiences, Successes, and
Opportunities"<http://www.hedon.info/docs/GVEP_Markets_and_Cookstoves__.pdf>published
by GVEP International in 2009.

(Jan -- there is also some discussion in the paper regarding your original
question about price, convenience, performance)

On pg 38, the authors present a figure comparing attributes of products
marketed to the poor. It turns out that the problem is more nuanced than
"the price is right". The decision-making steps presented in the paper are:

"Initial Perceived Value"
"Affordable with Disposable Income"
"Affordable with Microfinance"
"Magnitude of Change [to daily habits]"

Something like Coca-Cola has a high perceived value, is affordable with
disposable income, and requires little change to daily habits.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that cook stoves in rural areas
face barriers at each of those stages.
- low perceived value because of *gradual* negative impact to health
- generally not affordable with disposable income
- and often a big change to daily habits

Marc Paré
B.S. Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology | Université de Technologie de Compiègne

my cv, etc. | http://notwandering.com


On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 11:04 AM, Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Jan,
> I keep hearing about the people earning less than US$2 per day. In a
> lot of cases the income is shown to be low in statistics generated by
> the Government of that particular country. Even a landless labourer in
> a village in India would have some hens and a goat (or ducks and a
> pig), the income from which never enters the Government statistics.
> Another fact of life is that people's priorities differ from ours.
> Some of us feel that the poor should have a clean latrine and a clean
> kitchen, but the poor themselves often consider a cellphones in their
> pocket and a t.v. in the house to be more important. Also the rate of
> conversion of a dollar into the local currency is often manipulated by
> the Government. 2 Dollars in a poor country has a relatively high
> buying power in that country than in the US.
> Yours
> A.D.Karve
>
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 5:38 AM, Jan Bianchi <janbianchi at comcast.net>
> wrote:
> > Do any of you know of a list that compares different clean burning cook
> > stoves not only by fuel type, efficiency and emissions, but also by price
> > and the presence or lack thereof of subsidy?  I don’t see the latter
> > information on most websites that describe different stoves.
> >
> >
> >
> > If there isn’t such a list, maybe we could work to put together one by
> each
> > of you sending a link that describes a stove and stating the price they
> are
> > currently being sold for in local communities, together with whether
> there
> > is a subsidy and if so the amount?  I’d be happy to work with Erin to put
> > together such a list from your answers.
> >
> >
> >
> > For people living on $2 a day or less, what for example would be
> considered
> > a low cost stove?  Middling?  High?
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Stoves mailing list
> >
> > to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
> > stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
> >
> > to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
> >
> http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org
> >
> > for more Biomass Cooking Stoves,  News and Information see our web site:
> > http://www.bioenergylists.org/
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> ***
> Dr. A.D. Karve
> Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Stoves mailing list
>
> to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
> stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
>
> to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
>
> http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org
>
> for more Biomass Cooking Stoves,  News and Information see our web site:
> http://www.bioenergylists.org/
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20111120/29ddb614/attachment.html>


More information about the Stoves mailing list