Markets and marketing research on poverty and its alleviation: Summarizing an evolving logic toward human capabilities, well-being goals and transformation

Marketing practitioners and business scholars now view some of the world’s poorest communities as profitable growth markets. Hence a market-based approach to poverty alleviation has gathered momentum. This article traces the evolution of such a market-based approach over four decades and highlights a gradual trend away from a deficit-reduction approach (focused on constraints and justice) towards an opportunity-expansion approach (focused on capabilities and well-being). This trend is summarized in an analytical framework of human capabilities, well-being goals and transformative impact evolved from the literature. The framework is then used to analyse the practice of sanitation marketing, which has emerged as a key method in one of the highest priority domains in international development discourse – sanitation. The article concludes with a discussion of how contemporary work can further take forward the key tenets of the framework and guide the development of ‘good markets’ for the poor

Rethinking religion in the context of ethnicity and wellbeing

Identifying the ‘religion-ethnicity-wellbeing’ nexus as an understudied topic in marketing and consumer behavior research, we propose three main trajectories for future research: Firstly, given the politics of religions, there is a need for studying societies that suffer from and are affected by religio-ethnic tensions and also different types of risks that threaten people’s wellbeing in such contexts. Secondly, future research should investigate how and why markets may generate and mediate religio-ethnic prejudices and antagonism that put society’s wellbeing at risk. Thirdly, with the upsurge of transcultural alternative religiosities/spiritualities, researchers should examine how through the processes of religious hybridization and hybrid consumption people change their existing consumption patterns and how alternative religiosities/spiritualities influence their sense of wellbeing, particularly in contexts where religious shifts are resisted