Local Availability of Products / Services

Whereas other indicators measure the number of actors offering a given product / service, this indicator focuses on the extent to which a product / service is available in the various geographical areas targeted by an intervention. For example, it can show you the areas where it is difficult or impossible for people to purchase the product / service. It is a crucial precondition for people being able to use the desired products or services.

Determine the indicator's value by using the following methodology:

1) Define your unit of measurement – what exactly is the meaning of ‘local markets’. This can be, for example, markets at the lowest administrative level (e.g. commune or district-level markets). If you target a larger urban area(s), you can divide it according to the official quarters of the town/city. The most important thing is that the unit helps you understand the geographical availability of the given product / service. Unless you disaggregate geographically, it is not recommended that your units are shops or market stalls, as the resulting data can be misleading – for example, even if 60% of surveyed shops / market stalls sell a given product, it is possible that all these shops are located in one area (e.g. the provincial town) and no shops offer the product in other areas (e.g. rural or more remote areas). Do not include markets / areas where it is not realistic to expect availability of that product – for example, where demand would be low.

2) Conduct a survey assessing the availability of the given product / service. Since each ‘unit’ (market) can involve many individual sellers / service providers, it is important that you are able to identify whether in the given market there is at least one seller offering the given product / provider offering the given service. This is best done using ‘snowball sampling’ where you keep asking various stakeholders (e.g. sellers, users of the products / services, suppliers, relevant authorities, etc.) about where it is possible to locally access the given produce / service. If there is at least one seller / service provider in the given market / area that regularly offers the given product / service, you can conclude that it is ‘readily available’. The same should apply if the product is only temporarily unavailable due to being out of stock but the seller knows that it will be re-stocked within a short period – e.g. the next 1 - 2 weeks.

3) Count the total number (or percentage) of markets / areas where the produce / service is available. 

Disaggregate the data by the main target areas, proximity to the urban centres, and other criteria relevant to the focus of the intervention and the local context.