Ronika Chakrabarti

What are bottom of the pyramid markets and why do they matter

There are thousands of journal articles that concern themselves with markets at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP).1 What is there to say that hasn’t been said already? In 2002, an article published in the Harvard Business Review (Prahalad and Hammond, 2002) brought to the forefront of business and academic attention a ‘missing market’ that was claimed to be lying dormant, ignored by international and multination corporations yet worthy of attention for its potential to contribute to both economic and social prosperity. The notion of markets at the BoP is concerned with providing the ‘poor’ in developing and emergent economies with access to markets. Prahalad and Hammond (2002) champion the needs of the ‘invisible poor’ to the marketing efforts of multinational corporations. Prahalad and Hammond’s (2002) assert that the poor as ‘consumers’ constituted a sizeable market opportunity but this view has been criticised. In this essay, we explore how BoP markets might be reconceptualising to better shape interventions that relieve poverty.

Markets and marketing at the bottom of the pyramid

Concern with the role of markets in the lives of the poor has been growing consistently in management and marketing academic communities over the past two decades. Since the publication of CK Prahalad’s HBR article, and bestselling book (Prahalad, 2006; Prahalad and Hammond, 2002), an increasing number of scholars have turned their attention to understanding markets as a means to alleviate poverty and engaging the poor in economic life. The importance of markets and how they are performed is thought to be central to making better and more inclusive societies and to improving the lives of those at the bottom of pyramid (BoP). Indeed, those adopting a market studies approach would argue that ‘building markets is one of the most ordinary ways to produce society’ (Geiger et al., 2014: 1) – putting markets at the centre of the everyday practices of the poor. In concerning ourselves with BoP markets, we assert a very specific aim – to understand how market configurations that take into account the various concerns associated with unfolding economic transactions come about (Chakrabarti and Mason, 2014). Specifically, we start from the premise that (1) consumers cannot consume unless they are able to produce – an activity that generates the means for market engagement and consumption (Karnani, 2007; Viswanathan et al., 2010), (2) market practices are always situated in the particularities of time and place (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007) and as such cannot be divorced from histories and associations and (3) the globalisation of trade and markets entangles multiple and complex social–political–economic worlds in chains of practices that stretch across the globe (cf. London and Hart, 2011; Maurer, 2012). This approach calls into question extant conceptualisations of BoP markets as purely economic constructs. As Geiger et al. (2014: 3) explain, ‘Rather than simply replacing or overlaying social bonds with economic transactions, markets initiate a plurality of social relations of a new kind, bearing matters of concern that should be carefully monitored. They invite us neither to reject the economic dynamics of markets nor to try to purify them from any remaining social relations, but rather to search for modalities of organization that are all the more relevant for the implementation of market exchange’, one might add that this is pertinent – in any given BoP context. Indeed, it is notable that market actors often ignore deviant behaviours that result from balancing normative compliance with valuing the role of community in the practice of markets (Christensen et al., 2001; Layton, 2009). Such conceptualisations enable us to ‘…deconstruct the current axiomatic treatment of transaction-centric markets and to reconstruct the market as a socially embedded institution in which community ties are formed and sustained’ (Varman and Costa, 2008: 141). In this brief editorial, we draw on this unfolding understanding of what markets are and how they work to consider how we might re-conceptualise BoP markets, where we might find them and how our concerns about BoP markets are beginning to shape understanding, theorising and action.

Brand worlds: From articulation to integration

ABSTRACT In this paper, the authors reflect upon the last half-century of branding research, offering both integration and insight. They chart how the understanding of brands has evolved from mark-through mimesis, expression, and symptom to self-organizing phenomenon. Using Poppers Three Worlds hypothesis, they show how the various fragmented streams of branding research can be integrated so that they complement and supplement each other. The authors then provide a prognosis on the future evolutions of brands and branding research.

Goal orientation effects on behavior and performance: evidence from international sales agents in the Middle East

The concept of goal orientations and their effects on workplace behavior has been traditionally examined in a domestic context and often within the same organization. This article addresses the shortage of empirical research in this area by exploring whether goal and achievement motivation theory holds in an international Middle Eastern context. Based on data from 225 international sales agents (ISAs) located in the UAE, our findings extend the extant literature by providing fresh insights into an interfirm and international context. Using structural equation modeling, the findings confirm 10 hypotheses, and we specifically discover that both positive and negative feedback lead to greater learning and performance orientation that in turn influence ISAs located in the Middle East to work harder and smarter, which ultimately leverages performance outcomes. Several managerial implications for HRM practice are extracted from the study and directions for future research are provided.

When outsourcing fragments: customer creativity and technological transmutations

One of the most fundamental decisions made in firms is about what functions or activities the firm should perform within its own hierarchy, and which of these it should rely on the market to perform. Outsourcing is ‘an agreement in which one company contracts out a part of their existing internal activity to another company’. However, this article contends that outsourcing has changed, and is changing in ways that make the application of neat, legal and technically correct definitions hard to use, and even harder to apply in strategy. Under the new outsourcing paradigm, technology is not a passive ‘substance’, rather it is an active ‘force’. We aim to look at the ways in which technologies are re-shaped and transmuted by consumers. Through this analysis, we add the consumer activity to the conventional definition of outsourcing. We focus on one of the most highly anticipated and influential new products of 2007 – the Apple iPhone.