Language, the Hidden Barrier to Solar Adoption among Nigeria’s Middle Income Group
What if the term — Solar — reduces its appeal with consumers?
In creating new markets, there are obvious barriers to navigate with consumers; like accessibility to your product/service, affordability and available knowledge on the value of your product/service relative to the market.
Solar is a high-touch business, especially in SSA markets given, among other things, the need to educate consumers on its benefits. For completely off-grid communities in Nigeria, this is relatively easy given they are moving from 0–1, no access to access. And since these communities are served with mini or microgrids, it really doesn’t matter what the energy source is - wind, water or the sun, what’s important is that they get connected to a grid. This gets harder with the middle income group where there’s high consumption of off-grid solutions, most commonly the generator. Companies serving the middle-income group have to do two key things; educate on the benefits of renewable energy and overcome the status quo bias to change behaviour from the use of generators. Generators are a reliable, modern self-generating power source, and by virtue of its prevalence, middle income consumers are more confident in the generator as an alternative energy source than anything else. The benefits of solar are obvious if you’ve dedicated your life building a business around it but the average person with limited technical knowledge or poor information about solar would seem crazy to make the switch from a generator given how much perceived risk they might be taking on.
Taking middle-income consumers from 1–10 sounds great in theory, but we sell solar in its full potential — 24-hour power for your home (which sounds too good to be true in Nigeria), versus how it solves immediate needs — power important appliances in your home (which sounds more realistic). To us, the difference is negligible — the point of having 24-hour power is to keep important appliances on — but consumers perceive both offerings differently. Notice how SHS (Solar Home Systems) companies sell the promise of 24-hour power and then follow with limitations on what to use their products with and how long they last? We expect consumers to understand but this framing only signals a level of uncertainty and high risk not worth parting cash for.
I previously touched on solar’s low symbolic value due to low mental and physical availability; conversely, the high mental and physical availability for generators makes purchasing one a smart choice. Consumers don’t wake up one day thinking “I need an alternative power source from the grid, let me see what solar options there are”, 9/10 times they think “I need a new generator”. So to increase its symbolic value, perhaps solar panels need to have a striking unmissable colour like red or some blinking lights whenever consumers switch to solar from the grid.
And on language, perhaps solar home systems should be described as power banks for the home where consumers already understand how a power bank works.
How we frame Solar to Nigeria’s middle income group, and to consumers at large will determine its pace of adoption.
