Pwani Oil Commercial Director Rajul Malde has urged manufacturers in Kenya to rethink cleaning product pricing as households prioritise purchases they consider essential.
In an opinion article submitted for publication, Malde said manufacturers risk misreading demand when they treat all household cleaning products as equally replaceable.
“Products households consider essential behave differently from softeners and fragrance lines,” Malde said.
The distinction matters to Kenyan manufacturers because irregular household earnings shape purchasing decisions at kiosks and other retail outlets in Malde’s account.
Malde said roughly 84 per cent of Kenya’s workforce earns a living informally, citing the latest Economic Survey without identifying its year.
He said households without fixed monthly incomes repeatedly decide which purchases need protecting and which can wait until money becomes available.
His argument centres on the difference between products linked to household hygiene and those bought mainly for fragrance or softness.
Malde said families may reduce spending on fragrances and softeners before cutting products they consider necessary for children’s bathrooms or food preparation areas.
He used imagined households in Kayole and Karen to illustrate how different budgets can produce similar priorities rather than presenting surveyed families.
In the Kayole example, the household buys a smaller soap bar to match its weekly budget but continues to purchase bleach.
The Karen household retains its larger packs but becomes more selective about spending on softeners and fragrances in his illustration.
Malde said these choices can escape manufacturers who focus on sales volumes and basket sizes without examining what customers refuse to cut.
He also cited detergent prices as evidence of the pressure facing shoppers who continue buying within the cleaning category.
The article attributed a price of Ksh254.80 for a 500-gramme detergent pack in August 2026 to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.
It put the previous month’s price at Ksh252.70 but did not provide sales volume figures to support its argument about continued demand.
Malde said households respond differently where water is scarce, sometimes using one multipurpose bar for laundry and other cleaning tasks.
He said such substitution reflects an effort to protect essential cleaning needs rather than a withdrawal from the category.
For manufacturers and investors, his argument points to different exposure to customer switching within the same cleaning products portfolio.
Malde said products households associate with children’s wellbeing have greater pricing power than fragrance and softener lines.
The article does not provide household survey results or product-level demand measurements to establish the size of that difference.
Malde said manufacturers should build future pricing around those distinctions and compete harder on value where customers are more willing to switch.
Malde is the Commercial Director at Pwani Oil Products Limited.