At the bottom of the economic pyramid there may be some 5000 million people. On reflection, some strategies can help the poor and at the same time generate profits. Prahalad (2002), examining the India experience, has proposed some mind-set modifications for transforming the poor into active consumers. The first of these is seeing the poor as an opportunity to innovate rather than as a problem.
A definite means for reaching to the bottom of the economic pyramid is a disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovations (Christensen and Overdorf, 2000; Christensen et al., 2001) are products or services that do not have the same capabilities and conditions as those being used by customers in the normal markets; as a consequence they can be introduced only for new or less demanding applications among non-traditional customers, with a low-cost production and adapted to the necessities of the population. For example an IT company inventing a small tablet or PC system with lower costs but also with less service adapted to the base of the economic …show more content…
60). Its goal at that time is to boost company revenues and sales or customer relationship by building the brand through the gaining of, and association with the ethical dimension or social responsibility dimension (Murray and Montanari, 1986; Varadarajan and Menon, 1988). In a way, it searches for product differentiation by building socially responsible attributes that affect company reputation (Smith and Higgins, 2000). As McWilliams and Siegel (2001, p. 120) have stated out: “support of cause related marketing creates a reputation that a firm is reliable and honest. Consumers typically assume that the products of a reliable and honest firm will be of high quality’’. For example, a pesticide-free or non-animal-tested ingredient can be perceived by some buyers as preferable to other attributes of competitors’ products. Other activities, which naturally exploit cause-related marketing, are classical musical concerts, art exhibitions, golf tournaments or literacy