Africa’s Market Research Landscape
Market research, according to Entrepreneur Magazine, is the process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about a market, product, or service to be offered for sale in a specific market niche.
The researcher delves deep into the characteristics, spending habits, location, & needs of a business’ target market, an industry as a whole, and/or particular competitions a business face.
Primary research
This is a methodology used by researchers to acquire first-hand data. It is the information that comes directly from a source. Primary research is mostly used for scientific and academic purposes.
For example, Tunapanda Institute wants to increase the sales of their website services. We will formulate a set of questions and send a questionnaire to the former website clients. After the questionnaires are filled, we will sit down to analyze and interpret the responses. We will thereafter make an informed decision based on the interpretation of the data. The decision will give us a better way to tailor our website services since we’ll improve our services based on the feedback we received from our former clients.
In short, primary research gives organizations the information they need to succeed.
Secondary research
This is the type of research that has already been compiled, organized, and published by other people. It is where people use previously completed studies for their own situations. Examples include reports and studies published by government agencies, trade journals, industry publications, articles on magazines, etc.
Most small businesses start with secondary market research since it is cheap and can be obtained faster.
In 2017 IBM spent 7.3% of their total revenue on market research. This is according to Chessnotes.com.
Microsoft spends nearly 13.4% of their total revenue on market research and development.
According to Fortune Magazine, European car giant company, Volkswagen spends around 5.2% of their revenue on research and development.
Importance of market research
The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself ~ Napoleon Hills.
An insightful market research helps organizations have a better understanding of the current trends and market needs. An extrapolated market research help organizations to anticipate the customers’ behaviour. From Napoleon Hills quote above, the best way to sell your service or product is by first understanding the needs and patterns of your potential clients.
Market research also helps to significantly reduce risk and loss to organizations. Instead of blindly entering a new business niche with a theory of 50% survival and the other 50% failure, market research help visualize the landscape of a business niche; the analyzed and interpreted data from a market research reveals the pros and cons of a particular business niche. The reduced risk and loss are vital for organizations that would like to tap into new sectors or expand to cover new fields.
What are some of the idiosyncratic elements among African market research firms?
I analyzed the Kenyan market research landscape and put a list of features that identify the different firms.
SBO Research
SBO Research is a market and social research company based in Nairobi. It has branches and affiliate partners in several other countries such as South Africa and Ghana. The company is guided by the Market and Social Research Association’s Code of Conduct, Kenya’s professional association for individuals involved in compiling or using marketing and social research.
SBO Research has four main platforms to perform their market research services.
- Online questionnaires. Integrated with social media, online questionnaires allow SBO Research to reach a multitude at their comfort.
- CATI (Computer Aided Telephone Interviews). They have a well equipped Call Center with experienced staff to handle telephone interviews. The Call Center also maintains a high-quality audio during the phone interviews.
- MAPI (Mobile Assisted Personal Interviews). SBO Research considers themselves “the pioneers of mobile data collection in East and Central Africa, with over 400 registered interviewers possessing tablets and smartphones”. MAPI enables the company to collect both online and offline data. Also, the process significantly reduces the time taken per research work and other costly expenses such as transport.
- Mystery shopping where independent auditors acting as customers gather information about product quality or service delivery by a retail firm.
In summary, SBO Research company bring the following key benefits to its customers:
- Increased efficiency
- Enhanced quality
- Cost optimization
- Improved speed
Consumer Options
Consumer Options is a market research firm based in Kenya. They’ve been in operation for 12 years and have done research work for much-diversified categories. Their footprints extend past Africa countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Ivory Coast, but also cover America and Europe. The firm has done research work to clients in countries such as the UK, US, Denmark, and Germany.
To perform high-quality research works, they’ve developed their own home-grown tools. Some of these tools include:
- K-BUS. An omnibus survey tool with a robust and representative sample of more than 1500 Countrywide.
- Engage. This is an ethnographic research tool used to carry out observational research. The tool help researchers discover meaningful insights on how consumers interact and engage in their natural environments with various products or services.
- SME Explorer. A research tool designed for small and medium-sized enterprises which cannot afford hugely budgets for in-depth research.
Some of Consumer Options previous clients include:
- Unilever
- CocaCola
- Nokia
- Kenya Power
- Maseno University
Numbers Afrika
“Numbers Afrika partners with businesses to minimise risks while exploring opportunities that can significantly impact businesses’ growth”. The firm specialises in primary data collection to generate original data for clients in emerging, frontier, and developing markets. The firm also prides in the top-notch staff with knowledge in data analysis to generate the greatest value from secondary data sources.
Some of Numbers Afrika’s previous social research work includes civil education (voter education program), opinion surveys (in 7 different counties), and women reproductive rights.
KASI Insight
KASI Insight is an African based, award-winning research firm which deploys the use of AI via biometric research practices. The firm has gained global recognition and is trusted by international companies such as Bloomberg, Unilever, Kimberly-Clark, among others.
KASI Insight provides real-time users interaction insights for products. They combine biometric and survey research to deliver the insights needed before a product is actually launched.
Through their biometric system, lack of quantitative and objective data to support or refute claims made during standard surveys (such as biases and unwillingness of the interviewees to speak up) is a story of the past as far as KASI Insight is concerned. The biometric system has the capacity to measure the subconscious thoughts and feelings of a respondent.
Dalberg Research
Dalberg, formerly known as Research Solutions Africa, is probably the oldest research firm in this list. It was started in 1996 and since then, it has grown to cover more than 30 countries in Africa and Asia. The company’s areas of expertise include:
- Quantitative survey. Dalberg Research performs complex quantitative research works for respondents ranging from 50 to 25,000. They’ve also ventured into the phone survey techniques such as IVR, SMS, and online surveys.
- Qualitative survey. Dalberg’s research team has done a lot of works related to the qualitative survey. Group discussions, interviews, observation, ethnographies, and human centred design, just to mention a few are some of the qualitative activities that the firm has done over the past years. In addition, the firm has done qualitative projects in more than 20 different languages in major cities, rural and remote areas. The research team continuously sharpen their interview skills and try to come up with new methods to conduct qualitative surveys.
Market research might at times be expensive but most of the time, the out-turn is always beneficial for the growth of organizations which take it seriously and commit to executing on the interpreted results from the process.
Call to action
Do you want to launch a product or service in East Africa?
Tunapanda Institute got you covered. We assist businesses or organizations that would like to launch products or services in East Africa by conducting in-depth and high-quality research works.
We employ human-centred design, which starts with the people we are designing for and ends with the new solutions which are always tailored to suit the needs of our beloved clients.
HCD (Human Centered Design) fused with agile methodology makes our work more meaningful to our clients, because before we deliver the final product, our clients have their say after each and every sprint/phase of the product development. This makes us among the best experts in product testing, product development, human-centred design, and market research at large.
Some of our previous clients include:
Certell. This is a US-based organization that serves to educate people in the rural areas of Namibia about foundational economics knowledge and financial literacy. Tunapanda worked with the organization to develop an application which is currently in the Google Play Store.
Read and prosper. This is a US-based literacy promotion organization. We conducted a research on the local people’s reading cultures and habits to come up with a “reading product” that suits their needs.
For more information about market research, contact me at melkizedek@tunapanda.org or info@tunapanda.org.
