Marketing at the bottom of the pyramid: Literature review and future research agenda

Abstract

In the early 2000s, Prahalad and Hart presented the possibility of serving the poor profitably and alleviating poverty. They introduced the concept of BoP (Bottom/Base of the Pyramid). Recent scholarly work also justifies that BoP is a significant market, and it deserves attention from profit‐oriented businesses. An analysis of the existing BoP literature in the marketing domain reveals that the literature is scattered without a classification of themes, which can help researchers to understand the breadth of the area and depth of coverage in each of them. Intending to bridge this gap, this study synthesizes research on marketing in the context of BoP. The review uses a structured literature review method and classifies the various marketing studies on the BoP into relevant themes. This analysis of 88 articles published from 2000 to 2021 (October) includes a thematic literature review. It presents a comprehensive view of marketing literature on BoP, classifying it into five main themes: Conceptualizing Poverty, Market Assessment, Marketing Strategy, Consumer Behavior, and Role of Technology. The study also identifies major thrust areas within each of these themes. It concludes by offering suggestions for further research on the identified thrust areas, geographical contexts, and methodologies adopted. The study also assimilates insightful theoretical and practical implications.

Voting decision‐making of low‐income consumers: Literature review and research agenda

“…According to the idea, three essential components affect an individual's behavioural intentions: attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control (Vishnoi et al, 2022) Big Five personality trait…”

“…The five broad personality traits described by the theory are extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism (Gerber et al, 2010) Contact theory Intergroup contact under certain situations can diminish prejudices between majority and minority races of voters (Larson & Lewis, 2017) Duverger's law Elections with a single-ballot majority and single-member districts generally prefer a two-party system (Heath & Ziegfeld, 2022;Ziegfeld, 2021) Fragile states theory Security, capacity, and legitimacy gaps make a political system fragile and citizens unhappy with the existing system (Penh, 2009) Strategic voting/ Game theory It portrays a condition where a person votes for a different candidate or party than their genuine choice to avoid an undesired outcome (Munshi, 2019) Self-determination theory It states that people, based on respect for the principle of equal rights, can choose their preferred candidates freely (Vishnoi et al, 2022) Sociological model of voter choice (Columbia Model)…”

Theory generation from literature reviews: A methodological guidance

“…The first category includes eight articles on Transformative Service Research (TSR) and Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) . The articles in this group deal with the literature on poverty issues (BoP) (Vishnoi et al, 2022), social exclusion (Rawat et al, 2022, education and well‐being (Khatri & Duggal, 2022), children as consumers (Sigirci et al, 2022), elderly as consumers experiencing vulnerabilities (Berg & Liljedal, 2022), the role diversity training on consumer experiences (Thakur & Dhar, 2022) and healthy consumption behavior (Nguyen et al, 2022). Given that both perspectives, TSR and TCR, are attracting increasing research attention (Tsiotsou & Diehl, 2022), we hope that these articles will provide valuable future research directions.…”

“…Recently marketing scholars proposed the possibility of serving the poor profitably while alleviating poverty, demonstrating that BoP is a large market that merits the attention of profit-seeking firms. In their article titled "Marketing at the bottom of the pyramid: Literature review and future research agenda," byVishnoi et al (2022) explore the existing Bottom/Base of the Pyramid (BoP) literature in the marketing domain. The authors analyzed 88 articles published from 2000 to 2021 to present a comprehensive view of the marketing literature on BoP, classifying it into five main themes: conceptualizing poverty, market assessment, marketing strategy, consumer behavior, and the role of technology.…”

BRAND ACTIVISM: A Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

“…This new review protocol presents a step‐by‐step procedure to document the different phases of the work guaranteeing transparency and applicability (Paul et al, 2021). By aggregating the scattered literature, this paper increases the knowledge of the topic in various ways (Vishnoi et al, 2022). First, it offers an in‐depth overview of brand activism with an important historical focus in order to understand its roots and evolution; second, it presents a systematic synthesis of the extant literature; third, it provides three conceptual frameworks for the topic under investigation.…”