Bottom of the Pyramid Case Study

1. As a junior member of your company’s committee to explore new markets, you have received a memo from the chairperson telling you to be prepared at the next meeting to discuss key questions that need to be addressed if the company decides to look further into the possibility of marketing to the BOP segment. The ultimate goal of this meeting will be to establish a set of general guidelines to use in developing a market strategy for any one of the company’s products to be marketed to the “aspirational poor”. These guidelines needs not be company or product specific at this time. In fact, think of the final guideline as a checklist- a series of questions that a company could use as a start in evaluating …show more content…

2. Marketing to the BOP raises a number of issues revolving around the social responsibility of marketing efforts. Write a position paper either pro or con on one of the following:

a. Is it exploitation for a company to profit from selling soaps, shampoo, personal computers, and ice cream, and so on, to people with little disposable income?

b. Can making loans to customers whose income is less than $100 monthly at interest rates of 20 percent to purchase TVs, cell phones, and other consumer durables be justified?

c. One authority argues that squeezing profits from people with little disposable income-and often not enough to eat- is not capitalist exploitation but rather that it stimulates economic growth.

In this day of age, it pays dividends to have a highly active and involved market. If you take a step back, and look at the characteristics of the developed nations of the world and compare them to those of the third world or developing countries, many differences can be noted. However, one reoccurring trend is that of the absence of a strong, diverse, international and active marketplace in many of the poorer countries. The places of business found in these areas tend to operate on a local system with transactions taking place between natives and sometimes even forgoing currency to barter. Slowly, many large companies and firms are taking note of these markets. These BOP (bottom of the pyramid) markets are ripe with opportunity