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The authors look back and forward in terms of challenges and opportunities for marketing, viewed from the vantage point of the subsistence marketplaces stream. The authors discuss how marketing can evolve and expand to address the scale and scope of challenges that lie ahead. By way of challenges, the authors discuss the confluence of uncertainties, such as inherent in the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) contexts, in environmental issues, and in the arena of technological solutions, as well as the confluence of unfamiliarities among managers, students, and researchers. The authors discuss opportunities for marketing through a bottom-up approach and argue for evolving marketing with rapidly changing reality in BoP markets, a harbinger and an innovation laboratory for all contexts.

This chapter draws from an understanding of measurement error to address practical issues that arise in measurement and research design in the day-to-day conduct of research. The topics include constructs and measurement error, the measure development process, and the indicators of measurement error. The discussion covers types of measurement error, types of measures, and common scenarios in conducting research, linking measurement to research design.

This paper aims to study English as second language (ESL) consumers in the USA. The authors seek to focus on consumers who are literate in their native country, yet akin to fish out of water due to language difficulties and unfamiliarity with the marketplace.

Using qualitative interviews of 31 informants and shopping observations of a small subset, the authors examined cognitive predilections, decision making, emotional trade‐offs, and coping strategies of ESL consumers.

The findings relate to cognitive predilections, decision making and emotional trade‐offs, and coping strategies of ESL consumers.

The authors analyze ESL consumers from a situational literacy perspective, viewing the situations faced by ESL consumers in terms of functional literacy skills. The findings provide a variety of new insights, and have important theoretical and practical implications for theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss innovative consumer marketing approaches for simultaneous business success and social empowerment at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) or in subsistence marketplaces.

The paper draws from a research program comprising qualitative methods as well as case study analyses. The central aspect of the approach to this topic is that it is a bottom‐up perspective grounded in understanding consumers. The theoretical scope of the paper includes consumption, entrepreneurship, and social capital in impoverished environments.

The authors' key finding is that businesses must follow three principles for consumer marketing – deep understanding of subsistence consumer psychology, social embeddedness, and entrepreneurial empowerment.

This research has implications for theoretical and empirical advancement in the areas of structuring marketing activities, social embeddedness of marketing, and consumer policy.

This research has implications for several aspects of consumer marketing strategy. The authors categorize these under the following: marketplace research, marketplace solutions, value propositions, communications, partnerships, harnessing social capital, designing marketing structure, and evolving the marketing mindset.

This paper suggests that consumption and entrepreneurial productivity are inextricably linked in subsistence contexts with important implications for consumer marketing. The paper has value to BOP researchers and BOP business practitioners wishing to take a nuanced view to understand their markets and serve them better.

The purpose of this paper is to inspire research at the intersection of marketing and mental health. Marketing academics have much to offer – and much to learn from – research on consumer mental health. However, the context, terminology and setting may prove intimidating to marketing scholars unfamiliar with this vulnerable population. Here, experienced researchers offer guidance for conducting compelling research that not only applies marketing frameworks to the mental health industry but also uses this unique context to deepen our understanding of all consumers.

Common concerns about conducting marketing research in the area of mental health were circulated to researchers experienced working with vulnerable populations. Their thoughtful responses are reported here, organized around the research cycle.

Academics and practitioners offer insights into developing compelling research questions at the intersection of marketing and mental health, strategies to identify relevant populations to research and guidance for safe and ethical research design, conduct and publication.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first instructional paper to provide practical advice to begin and maintain a successful research agenda at the intersection of mental health and marketing.

In my forty years of academic research, I have seen the scope of consumer behavior expanded in many directions, both theoretical and practical. One direction has been a dramatic growth beyond behavioral responses to marketing efforts and simple decision making to include the understanding of how consumers process and internalize information and respond to market stimuli at both conscious and subconscious levels.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the different concepts of innovation in the subsistence marketplace from top-down and bottom-up approaches. This study analyzes the literature on the theme and identified research gaps by constructing a framework based on approaches and innovation concepts, which can guide future research efforts. Additionally, this paper presents two case studies, which can improve the way innovation is developed and diffused in the subsistence marketplace.

Through a literature review, this study develops a framework by analyzing innovation concepts in the subsistence marketplace (i.e. base of the pyramid innovation, disruptive innovation, frugal innovation, reverse innovation and inclusive innovation) in light of subsistence marketplace approaches (top-down and bottom-up).

The analysis showed critical research gaps, especially a lack of studies involving disruptive and frugal innovations from a bottom-up approach. This paper also concludes that the top-down approach is more common than the bottom-up one. To fill these gaps, this study presents two business plans by illustrating disruptive innovation vs bottom-up approach and frugal innovation vs bottom-up approach.

The use of real business plans to illustrate proposals having an actual impact on subsistence marketplace regions sheds light on how to address these challenges. By doing so, this paper intends to fill the theoretical gap in disruptive and frugal innovations within a bottom-up approach to promote the development and diffusion of different types of innovation in the subsistence marketplace, and thus provide solutions to alleviate poverty.