Taking Market Analysis Beyond Theory: Practices that Facilitate the Use of Market Information in Humanitarian Programming

Although strong examples of emergency programming that considers and responds to local market dynamics are out there, they are relatively few in number, and there is no consolidated review of these programs to inform good practice. Under the Improving the Uptake of Market Analysis project, a USAID/OFDA-funded effort that IRC conducted in partnership with Mercy Corps and CRS, the IRC reviewed existing market-responsive programming in order to extract and synthesize best practices.

The resulting brief, “Taking Market Analysis Beyond Theory: Practices that facilitate the use of market information in humanitarian programming,” presents an overview of the practices and other findings that emerged from the above-mentioned research, along with some of the case studies that illustrate them. This brief is intended to encourage readers to reflect on how they could better facilitate the use of market information (and more broadly speaking, any relevant contextual data) in the programming that they support and perhaps to inspire them to try out some new approaches for accomplishing this.