Today, the microfinance industry has begun to consider the extent to which changes in the operating environment, limited portfolio growth, increasing delinquency rates and movement of clients to the competition may be related to limitations of the design of products on offer, poor selection of target markets and inability to translate market intelligence into winning products.

Experiences of microfinance institutions globally over the past few years have shown that changes made on existing products by microfinance organizations are generally influenced by the knowledge of what competitors are doing and rarely on systematic analysis of actual market or client needs leading to poor targeting or product differentiation/development respectively. Few microfinance organizations have scanned their potential market so as to regularly upgrade, diversify or improve their products. While in some cases, institutions have been able to undertake some form of market research, there has been the lack the knowledge and systems to translate market the information into products, making the whole market research activity a loss-making investment. In some cases, the existing products and service delivery mechanisms may not be suitable for potential customers. What microfinance organizations now require are better decisions, better practices and better culture to enhance better positioning in their respective markets.

This course is designed for microfinance operators who would like to position their institutions in frontier finance and markets.

Specifically, the course will focus on:

By the end of this course, the participants will understand what market research is all about, the key instruments and methods used for research, how to identify appropriate market segments for product development, preparation required by the institution before the market research and how to translate market data into products.