Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces: Consumption and Entrepreneurship beyond Literacy and Resource Barriers

Abstract

In August 2006, 85 academicians and practitioners from industry and the nonprofit sector came together on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago for a conference unlike others in recent management research history. This conference focused on the subsistence marketplace and its constituents – the billions of individuals and families living in substandard housing, with limited or no education; having limited or no access to sanitation, potable water, and health care; and earning minimal incomes. Subsistence consumers and entrepreneurs have been largely ignored by contemporary marketing and management research and practice, but are poised to become a driving force in 21st century economic and business development. It is expected that as many as 1 billion new consumers wielding discretionary income will enter global markets before 2020. In addition, even among those consumers who lack discretionary income, it is expected that they will be much more active in the marketplace in the near future, because of expanded access to products and information through the Internet and wireless technologies (Davis & Stephenson, 2006). Moreover, the combined purchasing power of these consumers, already in the trillions of dollars, is likely to grow at higher rates than that of consumers in industrialized economies. These factors come together to suggest that consumer markets will need to adjust radically to the needs and demands of these emerging markets over the next 2 to 3 decades, even though companies and scholars across the business disciplines know very little about subsistence consumers. It was this need for knowledge about subsistence marketplaces that inspired the conference and the research presented here.

Citation

Viswanathan, M. and Rosa, J.A. (2007), "Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces: Consumption and Entrepreneurship beyond Literacy and Resource Barriers", Rosa, J.A. and Viswanathan, M. (Ed.) Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces (Advances in International Management, Vol. 20), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1571-5027(07)20001-4