The subsistence marketplaces literature has generated many insights on how the marketplaces of the poor function. One important issue that has remained understudied is how microentrepreneurs who start their career in poverty manage to break the status quo of subsistence marketplaces and obtain a stable position in the middle classes of developing and emerging countries. This article therefore investigates the business trajectories of entrepreneurs who have entered middle-class markets. The study shows that business development from lower-income to middle-class consumer markets is a stepwise process. Microentrepreneurs begin by serving relatives and acquaintances from their homes, then serve customers that they meet out on the street, and then upgrade their value propositions to target middle-class customers. Some of them further increase their businesses by entering business markets. From a strategic marketing perspective, the authors analyze the changes in resources and stakeholders that underlie the upgrades of the value propositions. The results provide implications for policy makers to create new jobs, generate tax revenues by formalizing businesses, and foster social mobility in emerging markets.
With upcoming middle classes in Africa, micro-entrepreneurs witness new opportunities that can potentially lift them out of poverty. Exploiting these opportunities requires entrepreneurs to make a 'step-change' away from the bottom of the pyramid to middle-class markets. This process hosts potential conflicts between informal-sector and formal-sector stakeholders as it requires both new resources and continued access to existing resources. By taking a strategic marketing perspective, this study labels and defines the phenomenon of step-change and offers an explanatory conceptual framework for it. The article draws implications for business development, the gender debate, as well as academic research.
The macromarketing literature has devoted substantial attention to marketing systems including those in emerging and developing countries. However, the market development of ‘endogenous’ products, which are products that are rooted in Africa’s natural- and socio-cultural resources and systems, is still understudied. Drawing on the 4As-framework and an exploratory qualitative study that examines market growth constraints for a product in Benin, this paper develops a descriptive theoretical model of market development for African endogenous products. The findings show that markets can be developed through endogenous marketing systems, because traders are familiar with the products and, once markets in easy-to-reach areas become saturated, they advocate their use in new market areas. Through this process, markets potentially grow from urban to peri-urban and rural areas. Because endogenous products have an inherent competitive advantage over foreign products, they deserve support in development policies next to the large commodities that typically characterize Africa’s production portfolio.
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