Sara Lindeman

A new perspective on market dynamics: Market plasticity and the stability-fluidity dialectics

Several researchers have pointed out that if marketing is to develop as a discipline and contribute to solving complex business and societal challenges, it should question the neoclassical view of markets and develop its own theory of markets. Efforts in this direction indicate an emerging view of markets as dynamic, subjective, and subject to multiple change efforts. However, the neoclassical view of objective, detached, and deterministic market still influences the dominant models used to describe market change. We argue that in order to better understand market dynamics, both academics and practitioners need new concepts and constructs that go beyond existing linear process and development stage models. We seek to contribute to improved understanding of markets by studying a special characteristic of markets that enables market dynamics. Borrowing a term used by Alderson (1957: 277), we propose that markets are characterized by plasticity, that is, a “potentiality for being remolded and responding in a different way thereafter.” Even though the plasticity concept was introduced into the marketing literature nearly 60 years ago, the plastic character of markets remains underresearched. This article investigates the meaning and manifestations of market plasticity, drawing analogies from the physical, natural, and social sciences. We define market plasticity as the market’s capacity to take and retain form and propose that the dialectic between market stability and market fluidity lies at the heart of market change.

Market formation in subsistence contexts: a study of informal waste trade practices in Tanzania and Brazil

The worlds low-income majority is increasingly seen as a new market, the base-of-the-pyramid (BOP) market, with opportunities for new business and poverty reduction through inclusive business. This has led to research on activities geared towards this market, such as strategies for market entry and BOP business model design. However, the market itself as a dynamic entity has not been problematized. This paper suggests that defining markets in subsistence contexts as ongoing processes of economic organizing and as bundles of practices, rather than as collections of people, offers additional tools for engaging in their realization. The empirical study of informal waste trade practices suggests that the emergence of a market is linked to the economic organizing process moving from being dominated by exchange practices towards a more diversified dynamic in which these practices become linked to normalizing and representational practices. This more diversified market dynamic is intimately connected to collective organizing efforts on behalf of subsistence market actors.

Sustainability Innovation at the Base of the Pyramid Through Multi-Cited Rapid Ethnography

The past decade has seen a proliferation of suggestions for market-based solutions to global poverty. While research emphasizes that sustainability innovation aimed at poverty alleviation must be grounded in user needs, few studies demonstrate how to study the poor for purposes of early phase innovation in business enterprises, especially in multiple locations comparatively. This study suggests that the necessary understanding of low-income users and their practices can be gained through multi-sited rapid ethnography. We exemplify how the process moves from understanding of needs of poor toward innovation and offer a general framework for evaluating the success of these types of projects. The paper describes the challenges and solutions found in a multi-sited rapid ethnography research in urban base of the pyramid (BOP) contexts in Brazil, India, Russia and Tanzania. It suggests businesses can learn about the poor with the help this method and conduct sustainability innovation on the basis of on the needs of the poor, rather than start with existing products.