Case Study –> 4252325 (blackboardcdn.com)
Read Chapter 13 – The Marketing Plan – Chapter 13: The Marketing Plan – Core Principles of International Marketing (wsu.edu)
2. Read the attached business case – Marketing to the Bottom of the Pyramid
3. Reflect upon your readings this semester.
4, Answer questions 1 and 2 at the end of the case.
4. Use your readings this semester to develop a BOP International Marketing Plan for cellphones, using the material presented in section 13.2 where the author shares:
The international marketing plan includes concern for:
a. corporate level considerations-determining the resources to be allocated
b. business level considerations, including:
i. assessment of stakeholders
ii. the situation analysis
c. functional level considerations that delineate the various activities that will achieve objectives
There is an enormous market at the “bottom of the pyramid” (BOP)—a group of some 4 billion people who subsist on less than $2 a day. By some estimates, these “aspirational poor,” who make up three-fourths of the world’s population, represent $14 trillion in purchasing power, more than Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Japan put together. Demographically, it is young and growing at 6 percent a year or more. Traditionally, the poor have not been considered an important market segment. “The poor can’t afford most products”; “they will not accept new technologies”; and “except for the most basic products, they have little or no use for most products sold to higher income market segments”—these are some of the assumptions that have, until recently, caused most multinational firms to pay little or no attention to those at the bottom of the pyramid. Typical market analysis is limited to urban areas, thereby ignoring rural villages where, in markets like India, the majority of the population lives. However, as major markets become more competitive and in some cases saturated—with the resulting ever-thinning profit margins—marketing to the bottom of the pyramid may have real potential and be worthy of exploration.
