Tools of the trade
Carpenter’s tools, rural Visayas, The Philippines This post was written by niti bhan and rss originates from www.nitibhan.com
Mapping global seasonality: national times of abundance and scarcity?
Connecting some dots made me think of this exercise. If national governments are increasingly looking at ways to bridge the informal economy with the formal, in order to provide more inclusive benefits to their citizens and at the same time there’s an increasing focus on providing inclusive financial services to those outside of the formal […]
The bottomline
Yesterday’s deep dive into emerging markets led to the realization that the drivers behind current day imperatives to measure and value the emerging global middle class were primarily economic. Who will replace the faltering American consumer? The assumption that none of these articles and research papers seem to question is that of consumption as the […]
Thirty years of emerging market strategy: a review
When managers in the West hear about the emerging middle class of India or China, they tend to think in terms of the middle class in Europe or the United States. This is one sign of an imperialist mind-set—the assumption that everyone must be just like us. True, consumers in the emerging markets today are […]
Implications of the democratization of technology in rural Kenya
Kathanzweni, Makueni District, Kenya As many of you are aware, I spent the first three months of this year immersed in rural Kenya taking a closer look at household consumer behaviour. Among other thing, my observations led me to write the following: Thus, it can be said that as mobile phones rapidly overtook radio and […]
Airtel’s advertising in Africa
Spotted this Airtel poster in Kilifi, on the Coast of Kenya. Knowing that all of their advertising is done in Mumbai, India’s Madison Avenue, I’m curious about the amount of photoshopping this image must have required for the East African market. This post was written by niti bhan and rss originates from www.nitibhan.com
Why South Africa should not be the entry point to reach Africa’s emerging consumer markets
This post is about something I’ve been musing upon for some months now, ever since my 2011 project which took me around rural and small town Kenya visiting with a variety of cyber cafes. Since then, many other well respected Kenyan professionals that I’ve spoken with, either in person or online, have confirmed my suspicions […]
Seasonality in incomes still underrated as influence on purchasing patterns
While the BBC has begun questioning the oft quoted “$1 a day” statistic used most often to demonstrate the bottom billion below the global poverty line, they barely touch upon the impact of seasonality on the population segment’s cash flow, and thus, their bottom line. And surprisingly perhaps, people who live on $1 a day […]
Acknowledging the value of the informal sector as an economic engine
Chief John Kolawole, the General Secretary of Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC), on Friday urged the Federal Government to harness the informal sector for economic growth. Kolawole told newsmen in Lagos that the sector was well endowed with economic resources that had not been exploited. “The informal sector, which is made up of hairdressers, […]
Lost in transliteration
A couple of things caught my eye on this highway sign in New Delhi last week – toll roads are increasingly common, I hadn’t ever seen one in the city before (but then again I haven’t lived here since the late 1990s.) And the prepaid “Gold” and “Silver” levels have been transliterated in Devanagari i.e. […]
