Convincing Customers to Buy What’s Best for Them: How Lessons from Clean Cooking Can Increase the Adoption of ‘Merit Goods’
November 10, 2025
Despite their clear benefits, “merit goods” — products or practices that improve both individual and societal welfare — often struggle to achieve widespread adoption. As Jean-Louis Racine at the Clean Cooking Alliance explains, even when these products and behavior changes offer solutions to pressing social and environmental challenges, traditional marketing approaches often fail to build significant consumer demand for them. He examines the clean cooking sector’s experience in selling cookstoves and fuels to emerging markets customers, highlighting effective strategies that can accelerate consumer uptake of these and other merit goods.
