Formal market data and insights are regularly and systematically gathered by big data companies that use this detailed information on consumers and their market to narrow and segment customers for tailored products or services. Big data could also inform priorities for better public agricultural research innovations in order for those innovations to meet the demand for nutritious foods by poor and nutritionally vulnerable consumers. Therefore informal market data should be, like formal market big data, rigorously gathered with a common methodology that is shaped by the realities of poor consumers and the markets where they source their foods.
This report is an appraisal of a methodological approach conceptualized and commissioned by GAIN and designed by Euromonitor to assess the informal dairy market in Ethiopia using formal market approaches. This work was conducted in 2019 with support from Wageningen University under the Agriculture 4 Nutrition and Health Program.