What Do We Know About Base-of-the-Pyramid Marketing? A Review of the Bop Literature

The recent development in globalization has seen multinational corporations (MNCs) recognizing and exploring the enormous opportunities in new and emerging markets when developed world markets are becoming increasingly saturated. Most global marketing strategies in emerging markets have been targeting mainly at the wealthy elite segment and the middle-income class. In the latest development, an increasing number of MNCs started to launch new initiatives to explore the opportunities in the underserved segment – the base of the economic pyramid (BOP), the largest and fastest growing segment of the world’s population. Our understanding of the BOP markets is going through a seismic shift in the last decade. Increasingly, the BOP consumers are recognized as highly resourceful entrepreneurs who possess valuable knowledge, resources and capabilities. As such, business development and enterprise creation driven by the poor has emerged as a powerful philosophy and tool for addressing poverty and marginality, bringing both social and economic value to the BOP markets. While the opportunities associated with BOP markets are becoming increasingly apparent to researchers and practitioners, there are crucial and unique challenges when MNCs attempt to balance firm’s profitability responsibility and social responsibility in their BOP ventures. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize previous studies and present a review of the accumulative knowledge in this important topic area. Implications to practitioners and researchers are drawn, and further research directions and propositions are suggested.