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EXTENDED ABSTRACT
Marketing's ability to improve the human condition is essential for its value and recognition in academia. This article examines the role of marketing in addressing social and economic development, particularly in relation to poverty. It explores two distinct domains: the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP)(Prahalad & Hammond 2002) and Subsistence Marketplaces (SMP)(Viswanathan & Rosa 2007) and aims to reconcile their perspectives to enhance consumer well-being.
The BoP literature initially focused on how multinational corporations (MNCs) could profitably enter rural markets and adapt products to serve poor consumers. However, it was criticised for lacking widespread social implications and failing to improve the real well-being of the rural poor (Karnani 2007; Kolk et al. 2014). The concept of BoP started to shift towards considering poor marketplace actors as entrepreneurs and producers, but it still fell short of empowering them and addressing their real incomes or social benefits (Dembek et al. 2020).
Academia soon recognised the importance of marketing in addressing societal concerns like poverty (Kotler et al. 2006). Understanding and removing consumer restrictions became essential as consumption came to be seen as an indicator of consumer well-being (Blocker et al. 2013; Chakravarti 2006). While the BoP literature was useful for MNCs, it did not focus on reducing consumer restrictions. Recognising the diversity of poor consumers and their unique traits, the need to understand their struggles and marketplace environment emerged. Fragmented studies existed, but Subsistence Marketplaces emerged to study poor consumers, their well-being, coping mechanisms, and capabilities. This marked a transition from a macro (BoP) to a micro (Subsistence Marketplaces) perspective..
Subsistence Marketplaces (SMP) emerged as a bottom-up approach that sought to understand impoverished contexts and the diverse needs and aspirations of people with low incomes. It aimed to capture the struggles of meeting basic necessities and provided insights into the marketplace experiences of subsistence actors(Viswanathan 2017). SMP represented a shift from a deficitreduction approach to an opportunity-expansion approach, focusing...