Who decides
Market research. In many Kenyan households the person at the shelf is not the person who funded the purchase. Ask who chose, who paid, and who can veto. Interview that role, even if they never open your app.
Category and brand
Market research participants in Kenya: recruit the buyer, not the app user
Market research asks who buys, how often, what they left behind, and who is allowed to decide. A usability sample asks whether someone can finish a task. Mixing those briefs gives you people who can install an app and have never bought the thing you sell.
Kenyan category work is concrete. Cooking oil bought this fortnight. Fuel for a boda, paid daily. School fees before a deadline. A salon client who switched because the last place kept the change. None of those people are “smartphone users aged 25–40”, even though almost all of them have a phone.
Recruit the purchase. Afritesting matches on that behaviour, the place, and the exclusions you set — brand staff, stockists, anyone who would narrate the trade instead of living it. You run the interview or, later, the survey. A typical 45-minute consumer interview is KES 3,500 a person. Ten of them are about KES 35,000, incentive included.
Ten conversations are not a market size.
They are how you learn the alternatives people actually name. Put a number on the category only after a survey you are willing to describe as “people who matched this brief”, not as Kenya.
Do not borrow a UX sample
The question decides the person.
What they left
Market research. The previous brand, the kiosk, the cash habit, the thing they still buy “just in case”. A usability test never surfaces this, because the prototype has no competitor on screen.
Can they finish
That is usability, later. Do not ask a cooking-oil buyer to evaluate a prototype in the same hour you are trying to learn why they trust a yellow jerry can. You will get feedback on the jerry can and politeness about the file.
How many
A survey, after the interviews have given you real answer choices. Invented brand lists produce invented rankings.
Three samples, not one
Buyers, people who stopped, and people who refuse.
Averaging them is how a category sounds simpler than it is. Split the recruit, even if each cell is small.
01
Current buyers
Bought or paid in a window you can check — this week, this term, the last trip. They teach the routine, the size, and the place of purchase. They overstate loyalty if you only talk to them.
02
People who switched or stopped
The useful minority. Something changed: price, a stock-out, a bad refill, a new kiosk on the way home. Ask for the last switch, not a general opinion of “the market”.
03
Refusers
People who know the category and will not buy it — the next sachet, the app, the loan. They are not “unaware”. If your growth plan depends on converting them, they need their own sessions. They will not appear in a customer list.
Place is a segment
A Mombasa wholesaler and a Kisumu kiosk can share a product and not a reason.
National briefs (“urban Kenya, ABC1”) collapse the coast, the lake, and Nairobi estates into one quote. Pick two places whose supply actually differs: a neighbourhood dukas versus a supermarket run, or a town where the brand is scarce versus one where it is on every shelf. Report them apart.
Trade interviews — the person who stocks the shelf — are not consumer interviews. Prices, credit from the distributor, and what sells out on Friday are a business conversation. Recruit those owners on purpose. Dropping one shopkeeper into a buyer group makes both sides perform.
When the language is stable, field a short survey of the same behaviour. Do not add a market-size claim the sample cannot carry. And do not recruit “people interested in FMCG”. Interest is free. A receipt in the last two weeks is the sample. More on writing that brief so agencies and group chats stop substituting their usual people: research participants in Kenya.
Questions
Category studies, without the theatre.
What is the difference between market research and UX research participants in Kenya?
Market research participants are buyers, lapsed buyers, or people who refuse the category. You are learning who decides, what they switched from, and why. UX participants are people who will try to complete a task in a product. A smartphone user is not automatically a buyer of cooking oil, fuel, or school-fee payments.
Can ten interviews size a Kenyan market?
No. Ten interviews can give you the language of the category, the alternatives people name, and the moment they switch. Sizing needs a different design, usually a survey with a sample you are willing to describe honestly. Do not put a market-size number on a qualitative slide.
Should I recruit users and non-users in the same study?
Only if you have enough of each to compare, and you do not average them together. Current buyers, people who stopped, and people who will not buy are three answers. A mixed group of eight will be dominated by whoever talks most.
How are market research interviews priced?
A typical 45-minute consumer interview is KES 3,500 per participant, recruitment and incentive included. Ten consumer interviews are about KES 35,000. More specific buyers — a trade, a county, a recent switch — are quoted higher before you pay.
Keep going
After the category is clear.
Who bought it, and who refused?
Name the category, the window and the places. We’ll find those participants for interviews or a later survey.