[Stoves] Stove costs

Sun Nov 20 11:47:59 CST 2011

Hi Marc,

Yes, I think for stovers interested in distribution of effective improved
cook stoves, attention to flexible financing and responsiveness to local
cooking conditions may be the more important questions to ask.

Thanks for the reference.  I was just looking for information on what’s
happening on the ground.

Isn’t it interesting though that no one has responded to this post and said
“We are selling X stove in X place for X?”   I guess that demonstrates what
you have suggested, that the answer requires a nuanced question.

Jan

  _____  

From: stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Marc Pare
Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2011 9:14 PM
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Stove costs

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
<http://www.hedon.info/docs/GVEP_Markets_and_Cookstoves__.pdf%20> "Cookstove
and Markets: Experiences, Successes, and Opportunities" 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/20111120/1e915a40/attachment.html>