How Result became Result:McCann – A trilogy of tragedy and comedy
This is part one and was first published on December 1st, 2005 while I was living in San Francisco. Life was a peach for Rajat Sethi while he was at Tara Sinha McCann-Erickson in the mid-nineties. As senior vice-president he was looking after an array of brands and serving their ‘traditional’ communication needs. His world […]
The Brass Ring Syndrome: When prosperity is close enough to make a jump for it!
We’ve been talking about that borderline where one goes from “destitute” or “BoP” towards becoming “emerging global middle class” or the AfDB’s “Sub Saharan middle class” since the common band that overlaps both categories is the ever popular $2-$4 a day and it is proportionally the largest segment of the population in most newly emerging […]
Affordability is not the same as a lower price point
Third party informal kerosene sales point deep interior of rural Eastern Kenya. Photo credit: Niti Bhan Absolute price of a product has always been assumed to be the means to successfully reach the BoP customer and the concept of affordable is often a synonym for cheaper. While price bands do matter when targeting this market, […]
Global emerging middle classes are Africa’s GEMs
Kentucky Fried Chicken at The Junction, Nairobi, Kenya 2011 Photo Credit: Niti Bhan Bright Simons cautioned us about hyperbole and exuberance in a recent article published on the HBR site. In “Beware Africa’s Middle Class“, he points out with great clarity that the ’emerging market consumers’ spotted by the optimists over at the African Development […]
More or Less: the flexibility of the informal
One of the things that stood out for me during the recent household consumer behaviour study was the lack of weights and measurements used to sell foodstuffs and commodities in the market. There were no weighing scales at all, unless they themselves were for sale. Instead, some form of “socially accepted” measure was used to […]
Estimating price in unexplored and untapped markets
In addition to estimating the size and value of the Kenyan cyber cafe industry for our client, Village Telco of Cape Town, South Africa, we were tasked with finding out what would people pay for their product, the Mesh Potato. This challenge was the equivalent of walking up to someone and asking: How much would […]
Dangerously obsolete: questioning the use of the all purpose label “The BoP”
Siim Esko wrote a short piece on his blog that inspired me to write out these thoughts. Since much of his work focused on the BoP in India and I’ve recent East African experience with the demographic, it was but natural for us to compare and contrast the challenges and the conditions of the lower […]
Prosperity McFizz
This post was written by niti bhan and rss originates from www.nitibhan.com
Timely and relevant or obsolete? Kotler’s BoP in India
Syamant just sent me this Business Standard article on Philip Kotler’s Centre of Excellence to open near New Delhi to focus on the BoP specifically. That is, the Bottom of the Pyramid which was the title of CK Prahalad’s seminal book on high volume, low cost markets in the informal economies of the developing world. […]
Market Segmentation in the Informal Economy
This table is from “How to profit from Africa’s different consumer groups” and the research is from NKC Independent Economists group. There is something lacking in understanding the patterns of purchasing power when segmentation methodology from the formal economy are applied ad hoc to markets which are primarily informal. As mentioned at the end of […]
