What is it about?
How do markets that are inclusive of people living in poverty work? What are the tools and practices that people use to engage in markets when the resources they have are scarce, there is little spare money about but equally, when family, friends and culture are a rich part of everyday life? This paper is an introduction to a Special Issue of Marketing Theory that considers these questions. We suggest that how we explain and talk about markets that include and enable the poor to engage, will open up new opportunities that enable those living in poverty to take a full and active role in socio-economic life.
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Why is it important?
The ideas discussed in this paper are important for those wanting to create an inclusive society because it directs our attention to aspects of society that we have not considered as critical to enabling market engagement before. We suggest that understanding the role different social histories, cultures, practices, tools and technologies, and social initiatives that sometimes appear distant and nothing to do with enabling economic engagement in markets, are really significant in helping us to create setting that support 'trade not aid'.
Perspectives
Enabling 'trade not aid' matters because despite the effort of some societies to help others, some social groups to support others, as 'one world' we have failed to prevent or alleviate poverty. By developing better understanding of how markets actually work in these extreme settings; by looking at them as complex clusters of entangled sociology-technical practices, we can ask constructive questions that help us reconceptualise the infrastructures, cultural settings and routine practices and resources that are available (from friendships to raw materials and roads), needed a enable people to provide the things their friends and families need through their engagement as market actors (as consumers and producers).
Professor Katy Jane Mason
Lancaster University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Markets and marketing at the bottom of the pyramid, Marketing Theory, May 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1470593117702286.
You can read the full text:
Resources
The Secret of Mumbai's Dabbawala: FT Life Notebook
This is an example of a local, culturally situated market that works for those that might otherwise be excluded from markets. Histories, families and culture practices are critical here, in making this market work, amongst other things (the rail infrastructure and social relations between the Dabbawala's and their families and customers).
The role of proximity in business model design: making business models work for those at the bottom of the pyramid
This is another article that considers the role that proximity plays between the different elements or aspects of markets needed to make markets work at 'the bottom of the pyramid'
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