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Building a Viable Commercial Market for Household Water Treatment Products at the Base of the Pyramid

Appropriate water disinfection at the household level can improve microbial water quality and significantly reduce diarrheal episodes, yet achieving sustainable national scale up of household water treatment (HWT) programs and changing behaviors of the targeted populations who do not have access to safe water have proven to be a challenge. This report describes the context in which HWT products are being commercially introduced to low-income markets and provides an overview of four documented experiences in marketing commercial HWT products to populations living on $25 per day: Procter and Gamble’s PUR Purifier of Water, Indonesia’s Air Rahmat, Medentech’s Aquatabs, and three commercial manufacturers of water filters in India. The report discusses the marketing and behavioral challenges faced by companies manufacturing and marketing HWT technologies as well as opportunities for positioning HWT products among low-income consumers. Commercial manufacturers cannot afford to invest large sums in public education, behavior change programs, or dedicated distribution channels. Thus, public/private partnership approaches can be appropriate strategies for both allowing the commercial sector to invest in market-building activities and take advantage of its own strengths and refocusing donor and public sector resources on demand creation activities that would not only increase the health impact of water treatment interventions, but also create markets for private suppliers of water treatment products.