Serving low-income markets: Rethinking Multinational Corporations’ Strategies

In recent years a new debate is emerging about market-based approaches to serve lowincome communities, opportunities in such markets and the role of multinational corporations. This paper aims at providing an overview of low-income markets thereby analyzing challenges that multinational corporations face in addressing such markets. Various examples of low-income market approaches are examined and different firm strategies regarding R&D, production and distribution in such markets have been illustrated and discussed. It is argued why specific strategies, many of them new to multinationals, are to be devised when it comes to serving low-income communities.Multinational corporations, Low-income markets, Bottom of the Pyramid, Business strategy

Job Creation Through Building the Field of Impact Sourcing

Provides an overview of the field of impact sourcing - using business process outsourcing to create sustainable jobs for the lowest-income populations. Offers case studies, examines models, outlines challenges, and presents an action agenda

The marketization of poverty

Increasingly, transnational corporations (TNCs) see themselves, and are seen by multilateral development organizations and national governments, as part of the solution to global poverty alleviation. Guided by C. K. Prahalad's theories about the "bottom of the pyramid" (BoP), TNCs are developing products and services for the billions of people living on a few dollars a day that are supposed to enable these poor people to enterprise themselves out of poverty. In the process, poverty and the poor are made amenable to market interventions by being constituted as a potential new market for TNCs. Hewlett-Packard's (HP's) e-Inclusion program was the first corporate-wide BoP initiative in the high-tech industry that aimed to create corporate and social benefits. An analysis of its companyinternal evolution from an intrapreneurial initiative to a fully incorporated business operation is complemented by a study of e-Inclusion's activities in Costa Rica, which aimed to improve the lives of rural Costa Ricans by providing access to HP technology and by creating new sources of income for electronic entrepreneurs. However, transforming the poor into protoconsumers of TNC products and services cannot address the structural drivers of their circumstances and will lead to neither the eradication of poverty nor a corporate fortune at the BoP. © 2011 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved

Incorporated citizens: multinational high-tech companies and the BoP

In this article, I examine HP’s e-Inclusion program and its implementation in India to show how the high-tech industry’s efforts to alleviate poverty profitably are guided by C. K. Prahalad’s ideas about the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP), and are framed as digital corporate citizenship activities. While the BoP highlights the importance of new markets for high-tech companies, the discourse of digital corporate citizenship creates an enabling environment in which transnational high-tech companies can gain political access to new consumers at the BoP. The resulting digital corporate citizenship/BoP nexus leads to the extension of governments’ bureaucratic reach and the formation of electronic entrepreneurs

Marketing to the Base of the Pyramid: A Corporate Responsibility Approach with Case Inspired Strategies

The economic and political outcomes of market globalization continue to be complex. As international corporations engage developing markets, they increasingly find consumers who lack market sophistication, meaningful purchasing options and economic leverage. Such conditions are ripe for the exploitation of these market segments but also can be mitigated by enlightened managers willing to thoughtfully consider their ethical and professional obligations to vulnerable consumers. This paper builds on a normative ethical framework, labeled the integrative justice model (IJM) for impoverished markets that was introduced in the marketing and public policy literature. Specifically, the paper will extend the normative ethics of the IJM by proposing logically reasoned decision principles for managers, particularly in MNC subsidiaries, that might better shape ethical business strategy when targeting impoverished segments. Additionally, numerous case examples are given to illustrate how a number of these decision principles are already being applied by companies around the world. Such an approach can serve as a counterweight to the difficulty of crafting global regulations for market development

Business Leaders Marketing to Bottom-of-the-Pyramid Consumers in Nigeria

Business leaders often leave more than half of the world\u27s population the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), a $5-trillion market of potential consumers untapped for products and services on account of failing to see BOP markets as profitable for business, yet business leaders who have managed inclusive BOP marketing in Nigeria have experienced profit margins as high as 120%. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies of business leaders who market to BOP consumers in Nigeria and maintain a profit. The study population consisted of 3 business leaders in the Dallas and Fort Worth metropolitan area who marketed to BOP consumers in Nigeria and maintained a profit. The conceptual framework that grounded the study was BOP marketing theory. Data were collected through semistructured in-depth interviews and company documents, with member checking implemented to strengthen creditability and trustworthiness. Based on the methodological triangulation of the data sources collected, 3 emergent themes were identified following 5 stages of data analysis. The themes were (a) maintain low profit margins in marketing essential items to the BOP in Nigeria, (b) maintain high profit margins in marketing to the non-BOP in Nigeria, and (c) market scaled-down products to the BOP in Nigeria. The findings from this study may contribute to social change by providing insights and strategies for business leaders seeking to prepare for and sustain profitability. The data from this study may contribute to higher profit margins for business leaders as well as job placement and entrepreneurship opportunities for the communities of Nigeria

Impact Investing and Inclusive Business Development in Africa: A research agenda

Impact investing aims to create sustainable social and environmental impacts for investee enterprises and communities as well as adequate financial returns. As an attractive emerging market investment strategy, it involves development finance institutions and philanthropic foundations partnering with mainstream private venture capital to create impact funds with the goal of catalysing inclusive market-based enterprise development in low income countries. In this paper, we present findings from a scoping study discussing the nature and operations of impact funds in African economies and the associated research opportunities on this topic. To facilitate the assessment, we reviewed the existing literature on impact investing, considering this along three interrelated perspectives, namely 1) impact investing as development finance policy for economic development, 2) impact investing as a development in socially responsible investing, and 3) impact investing as capacity-building for inclusive business development in African economies. The interplay of these perspectives shapes the constitution and operational strategies of specific impact funds and provide a conceptual context for understanding impact investing at country level. Drawing on interviews, email exchanges and roundtable discussions with representative global and country-specific (Sierra Leone, Cameroon and Kenya) stakeholders our analysis makes three contributions to the impact investing debate. First we explore a model for understanding the ways in which impact funds are being channeled into inclusive businesses in Africa and the associated catalytic effects on poverty alleviation, social and economic development. Second we identified and tested access to, a range of impact funds and associated sector-specific inclusive businesses for future case writing – hopefully ‘failures’ as well as ‘successes’. Finally, we reflect on some of the unanswered managerial and policy-related questions that require a more rigorous inquiry-led appraisal to better understand and enhance the contribution of impact funds to inclusive business development in Africa

A sustainable village phone model to serve the rural developing world

Wireless technologies have created an unprecedented opportunity for rural customers in the developing world to solve their communication and information problems in an instantaneous, interactive and customized way. The framework of the study focuses on existing mobile village phone model in Bangladesh and suggests ways to make it sustainable through mobile information services marketing. The study has treated ‘village phone’ as a cost effective and interactive channel through which various time befitting information can be marketed to serve customers in the rural settings