Consumption of Bottled Water at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Who Purchases First?

Abstract

While consumer and marketing research in developed markets is an established field, research on consumers in an Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) setting is less established and mostly conceptual or qualitative. This paper examines the individual heterogeneity and the local context of BoP consumers with an empirical study on consumption of low cost bottled water on the Kenyan coast and the capitals of Uganda and Rwanda. The empirical analysis builds on existing research exploring consumer behavior, and it studies a database of 713 bottled water consumers in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Consumers with a higher level of education were less likely to be late consumers. Additionally, early consumers were more likely to purchase due to a purposeful search for a bottled drinking water solution. Since we control for location specific effects we highlight the importance of supply driven consumption in the BoP market. Furthermore, the results suggest that the two water companies may not be reaching their targeted low-income consumers but rather middle class consumers. The research contributes to the larger BoP debate by presenting evidence that consumers in a BoP setting may purchase more on the basis of supply of a product rather than other socio-demographic factors such as income.

Researching the marginalised bottom of the pyramid in Africa: Lessons and prospects for inclusive, relevant practices

“…There are various disagreements on the thresholds that should define the BOP, ranging from Prahalad's seminal work and US$1 per day threshold to the World Bank's US1.90 to others with higher thresholds, such as Rangan et al's (2011) US$5 threshold (Deb & Sengupta, 2020). It is evident from this discourse that the segment is not homogenous but a collective of segments that display some common characteristics in other global BOP markets (Howell et al, 2020;Lappeman, Chigada, & Pillay, 2019).…”

“…Globally, the BOP is estimated to be more than four billion in number. Although often excluded from the mainstream global capital narrative, the group represents a significant aggregate buying power and the segment requires more research attention (Baishya & Samalia, 2020;Charman & Petersen, 2017;Howell et al, 2020).…”

“…The BOP is not one homogenous segment but is heterogeneous and constantly evolving (Dembek et al, 2020). Part of this evolution involves potential mobility between the BOP tiers of extreme poverty, subsistence and low-income groups, which was framed by Rangaan et al (2011) to reinforce the heterogeneity of the segment (Howell et al, 2020). The extreme poverty and subsistence groups within the BOP represent the majority of the BOP in Africa whose income thresholds of less than US$1, or between US$1 and US$1.90, makes them vulnerable and marginalised.…”

“…The BOP is also not always self-defined as vulnerable because of the different levels of wealth even within the segment (Neethling, 2017; Simpson & Lappeman, 2017; Charman & Petersen, 2017). Recent studies on the overall BOP segment have focused on mapping the evolution of the BOP (Dembek, et al, 2020; Follman, 2012; Howell et al, 2020; Kolk et al, 2014). This is further expanded in the section which contextualises the MBOP where we outline our rationale and justification for separating the MBOP from the broad BOP segment.…”

Sustainable Entrepreneurial Ventures and the Bottom of the Pyramid: Creating Sustainable Values and Opportunities

“…The limited focus on actual poverty alleviation and the consideration of BoP mainly as a consumer is noticed, for example, in the case of cell phone trade in Thailand (Pipitwanichakarn & Wongtada, 2019), the case of logistics services for the delivery of orders in Brazilian slums (Duarte, Macau, Silva, & Sanches, 2019), and in the case of bottled water trade in African countries (Howell, Sinha, Wagner, Doorn, & van Beers, 2020), reported in the literature on BoP. Despite these initiatives aim to improve the access of BoP populations to products and services, most studies still consider these populations only as a consumer market (Dembek et al, 2020;Kolk, Rivera-Santos, & Rufín, 2014).…”