Guest editorial

Citation

Pitta, D. (2008), "Guest editorial", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 25 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.2008.07725gaa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Consumer Marketing, Volume 25, Issue 7

About the Guest Editor

Dennis A. PittaEarned his PhD degree in Marketing from the University of Maryland College Park. He holds the rank of Professor and is currently the J. William Middendorf Distinguished Professor at the University of Baltimore. He has authored or co-authored a number of refereed journal articles. He has published in scholarly and practitioner-focused journals such as Journal of Consumer Marketing, Journal of Product & Brand Management, International Journal of Advertising, International Business Economics Research Journal, and Journal of Business & Economics Research. His teaching and research areas are new product development, creativity and creative culture and global marketing strategy.

C.K. Prahalad’s ground-breaking work, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits, caused considerable excitement when it appeared in 2004. It called for a radically different approach to serving a huge unknown and unserved market segment. The book stirred noble feelings among marketers who welcomed the opportunity to serve the poor. Traditionally, the most successful marketers targeted wealthy segments that would respond well to differentiated products that satisfied their needs. Prahalad fired the imaginations of marketers by describing bottom of the pyramid (BOP) consumers in familiar terms. He portrayed them as wanting the same things as wealthier segments. Non-marketers also responded to his work. It promised potential sustainability to the non-governmental organizations that dispensed charity to improve the condition of those billions who subsist on a meager income. When donor sources were exhausted, the aid stopped.

Prahalad’s most important argument was the promise of making profits, if the right combination of product, distribution, promotion and price could be found. Profits would sustain the process. He cited clear examples and energized marketers to serve the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) while earning a profit. He developed an approach that recognized the severe challenges this new segment presented, but cited numerous examples of success. The totality of those examples provided a marketing toolbox of tactics like smaller product sizes, simpler products with fewer benefits, alternative distribution, and alternative production processes to minimize cost. All of which were described as the right tools to serve the market.

One of the effects of his work was a movement to apply BOP marketing tactics in various settings. The results have been mixed. Some promising initiatives seemed to work, others have failed; a result that prompted reexamination of the BOP. Other authors, notably Aneel Karnani, argued that approaching the BOP as a group of consumers was a faulty strategy. After paying to subsist, they simply do not have enough disposable income individually to be consumers. He emphasized the BOP as vendors, not consumers. If companies could buy what the BOP produced, the poor would be transformed into consumers with enough disposable income to be worthy marketing targets.

Research has investigated both viewpoints. Currently it is clear that the BOP may be profitable for some but not all products. The determining factor is cost. Some products cannot be made cheaply enough for the BOP to afford.

After four years of investigation, there are some lingering questions. One is exactly how many poor are there at the BOP and how poor are they? Other questions involve strategies for successful BOP marketing efforts; what works and what doesn’t. We are still getting a picture of what products may be profitable at the BOP and which ones may not be. In this issue we resolve some of the questions and pave the way for further refinement of the process of marketing to the BOP.

Dennis PittaUniversity of Baltimore, Baltimore, USA