Researching the marginalised bottom of the pyramid in Africa: Lessons and prospects for inclusive, relevant practices

Tendai Chikweche, James Lappeman, and Paul Egan

Africa is home to 27 of the world's 28 poorest, marginalised and most vulnerable countries. There are limited studies on the challenges and opportunities of researching marginalised consumers in Africa, even though more than 440 million marginalised consumers consume products and services that require market research.

Introduction

Researching the marginalised in Africa has primarily been the domain of disciplines such as sociology and development studies. Business-related disciplines, however, have been less representative of the marginalised. Current research on the marginalised in various business domains has focused on studies primarily in emerging markets in Asia (Kolk et al., 2014; Sridharan et al., 2017). This research historically left Africa as a neglected destination for market research, with the continent itself lacking an adequate pool of continent-specific journals. The steady emergence of business studies on the marginalised has somewhat changed this trend because of Africa's high marginalised population (Chikweche...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands