Madhu Viswanathan’s research while affiliated with Loyola Marymount University and other places

We conducted a field experiment to gain marketing insights into low-income, subsistence consumers in emerging markets. We examined two phenomena– marketplace literacy which is knowledge and skills about the marketplace to overcome challenges with low income and relatively lower literacy, and membership in self-help groups that has empowered women around the world. We studied how these factors influence strategies for managing product quantities essential for day-to-day survival in contexts with resource constraints. In a prospective design, low-income women were randomly assigned to self-help groups and marketplace literacy education, with pre- and post-measurement. Our findings suggest that, whereas self-help group membership and marketplace literacy help women in low-income households improve their strategies to manage product quantities, the interaction of these two variables leads to counterintuitive outcomes. Our findings provide a nuanced understanding of how consumer and marketing insights can empower consumers in resource-constrained settings to become more effective.

We examine a bottom‐up approach to consumer and marketing education for subsistence consumers, that is, those with low income and relatively lower literacy levels. They face a variety of cognitive and other constraints, with difficulty in abstract thinking being a central issue that is critical for effective decision‐making. We study the impact of marketplace literacy education, with its unique bottom‐up approach, on abstract thinking in the consumer domain. We test the effectiveness of a bottom‐up educational approach, which covers concrete examples before abstract concepts, compared to the reverse sequence of a top‐down approach. We find that the bottom‐up approach in marketplace literacy education leads to more abstract thinking in the consumer domain compared to a top‐down approach. We discuss the implications of this research for consumer affairs.

We present a bottom-up marketing approach as a pathway to addressing the grand challenge of poverty and inequality for the marketing discipline. We derive this approach from the research stream on radically different contexts of subsistence marketplaces. Research on subsistence marketplaces has typically explored micro-level phenomena but also traversed upward and explained aggregate phenomena at higher levels. We present a conceptual framework to encapsulate general and granular elements of the bottom-up marketing approach. Study 1 demonstrates general elements of the framework through a retrospective examination of the global diffusion of a marketplace literacy program. Study 2 demonstrates the more granular elements of the framework through a qualitative analysis of five case studies of social enterprise start-ups. Though presenting a complementary counter-perspective to conventional thinking, we embed the process of interweaving the bottom-up with the macro level to present an actionable approach. We conclude with insights for marketing research and practice.

We describe lessons learned from one-and-a-half decades of global virtual immersion practices in subsistence marketplaces, and explore implications for international business teaching and learning in the post-pandemic world. Global virtual immersion refers to bottom-up learning experiences, typically in contexts much different than what we may be familiar with, without being physically present in a specific geographic location. “Bottom-up” learning connotes learning from actual ground-level reality rather than the opposite, “top-down” reliance on prior knowledge. The aim of global virtual immersion is to move learners from sympathy – a most natural human emotion in response to poverty and suffering, to informed empathy, developing an understanding of subsistence marketplaces in different countries through a variety of means. Students, thus, broaden their global horizons, paving the way for additional learning and perhaps actual immersion, where possible. This process is particularly relevant as global contexts are so diverse and often elude generalities, and more so at lower income levels. This “bottom-up” approach for understanding subsistence marketplaces enables a better appreciation of the environmental realities, social contexts, market-level exchange systems, and individual behaviors of subsistence consumers and entrepreneurs, providing a particularly important learning approach for international business education across geographically diverse settings.

We study the impact of marketplace literacy education on marketplace coping behaviors in the face of systemic shock due to demonetization, deriving important implications for consumer affairs from this radically distinct context. We study whether and how such education can have positive impact even in the face of such macro‐level disruption that disproportionately affects those with the least resources and renders them even more vulnerable. Marketplace literacy education encompasses awareness and knowledge about marketing as well as self‐confidence and awareness of rights as buyers and sellers. We examine the influence of marketplace literacy, in urban and rural areas on coping behaviors of low‐income women consumer‐entrepreneurs during demonetization in India, using a retrospective survey. We derive implications to mitigate the effect of future shocks on consumers and entrepreneurs at the vulnerable end of the income spectrum. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

This introductory article is a biennial exercise to reflect on the stream of subsistence marketplaces as a prelude to the special section on this topic following the Sixth Subsistence Marketplaces Conference in 2016. The call for papers was not restricted to conference presentations. At the end of the review process, the special section contained four articles spanning a diverse set of topics. The authors provide an overview of the subsistence marketplaces stream and a background of the conference series. This is followed by a brief introduction to the special issue. They then discuss the what, how, and why for past and future work on subsistence marketplaces.

The authors look back and forward in terms of challenges and opportunities for marketing, viewed from the vantage point of the subsistence marketplaces stream. The authors discuss how marketing can evolve and expand to address the scale and scope of challenges that lie ahead. By way of challenges, the authors discuss the confluence of uncertainties, such as inherent in the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) contexts, in environmental issues, and in the arena of technological solutions, as well as the confluence of unfamiliarities among managers, students, and researchers. The authors discuss opportunities for marketing through a bottom-up approach and argue for evolving marketing with rapidly changing reality in BoP markets, a harbinger and an innovation laboratory for all contexts.

A bottom-up approach grounded in micro-level understanding of the thinking, feeling, behavioral, and social aspects of living with low income and associated low literacy can lead to greater understanding and improvement of interactions in the health arena. This paper draws on what we have learned about marketplace interactions in subsistence economies to inform innovations in medical education, design and delivery of healthcare for lowincome patients, outreach education, and future micro-level research at the human-healthcare interface.