Since this series started, we have examined how cultural and taste differences can quietly destroy a product that has every other advantage working in its favour. Organisations must close the gap between what a product delivers and what a consumer’s palate wants. We saw, through the story of Snaps and McDonald’s in India, how a formulation built for one market can become a liability in another, and how organisations often compound the original product error by applying sales pressure to a problem that no amount of selling can solve.
The conversation today has less to do with what the consumer feels about the product and more to do with what the numbers say about the product’s right to exist. This factor is the cost of production. While it may appear at first glance to be a finance conversation rather than a marketing one, I want to challenge that framing from the outset. When the cost of producing a product makes it impossible to price competitively, impossible to sustain margins, and impossible to generate a commercial return, it is a marketing problem as much as it is an operational one. This is because a product that cannot be priced right cannot survive the market.
Nigeria has delivered four major devaluation shocks (1999, 2008, 2016, 2022–24), the last erasing over half the naira’s dollar value in twelve months. Businesses that stress-tested for 20% swings faced 50%+ moves. Products with imported inputs or finished goods had their cost floor pushed past viable price points, not from demand erosion, but from currency mechanics no operator controlled. The same impact occurred when the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict drove global wheat prices up over 50%, hitting import-dependent bread, pasta, and biscuit manufacturers simultaneously with FX pressure. Some products were withdrawn on pure cost issues, not consumer rejection. Cadbury Nigeria’s cocoa exposure offers the counter-case: decades of investment in local farmer sourcing, hedging, and reformulation capability have functioned as active margin protection across multiple price cycles.
