Consumer behaviour in Nigeria has revealed some interesting unique traits about the most lucrative market in Africa, a research by Nielsen, world’s leading market research company, has shown.

Country Manager, Nielsen, Mr. Harshvardan Sarda, while sharing some of these market insights to clients during ‘Nielsen Client Insight Event 2014’ in Lagos, said that a typical Nigerian consumer would want to stand out and keep with the trend just as he expects the products he is willing to buy to be fairly common and available.

According to him, Nigerians go after affordable and available products. But beyond availability of products, Sarda said there is a whole lot more that is unique to Nigerian consumers: “They want products that are made for them.

They don’t want something that is being adapted from somewhere else. Nigerians like products which are unique to them and which meet their needs but at the same time must be products with good quality, value, fashionable and trendy.”

Sarda added that forty percent of Nigerians spend their income on consumer goods, which makes it possible for growth for brands even as he revealed that the 50 percent of the Nigerian population which are youth positions Nigeria as a country with high possibilities for trying new products.

The youth population, according to him, is educated, mobile and any serious brand targeting the youth should have presence on the social media to connect with the youth.

Alisa Wingfield, Executive Director, Marketing & Communication, Africa and Middle East, Nielsen explained the purpose of the get together with clients and said: “There is more to achieving success and you can do that by showing insight of what consumers want. Most of what is more important for us as a business is understanding what consumers want and meeting their needs.

We have done concept testing of products in the Nigeria market and those that have been successful; we want to share those insights with our clients as to how to launch successful products that meet the needs of the Nigerian consumer.

“Also to share some information, we have done a census in Nigeria, we have enumerated some retail outlets in Nigeria and have covered over half a million outlets. So it is about saying that when you have a really great product, how do you get it to the consumer and make sure that you are in the right place to reach these consumers.

Again, we have used this information which we got from over 500,000 stores which are the key stores to be able to identify greatest impact in terms of reaching consumers and sales consumer brand in Nigeria”.

On how to compare consumer behaviour in Nigeria and other developing markets, Wingfield said that markets across Africa are not comparable to one another because they are so diverse and cuts across 54 different countries, adding, ‘by no means can we assume that consumer needs in one country are the same as the other.’

According to her, “the first thing we know is that instead of trying to group similar consumers we know, we need to look out for the diversity and some of the keys to success is understanding consumers in different places. To make it a little bit easier, we have looked at consumer segmentation in 15 countries in Africa, trying to identify similar traits, life styles and behaviour to be able to help our clients tap into these consumer groups.”