Approximately half of the world's current population lives in poverty, and more than 90% of those people live in developing countries with limited access to basic social and economic amenities. Mired in such widespread poverty, developing countries thus appear to offer little opportunity for the traditional role of marketing to facilitate the monetized exchange of private goods. However, as this synthesized review of the practice of customer orientation at the World Bank shows, fundamental marketing principles and practices play an important role in incorporating the voice and interest of the poor in the provision of public goods that are designed to improve their quality of life and standard of living. This role for marketing in developing economies helps create the necessary socioeconomic infrastructure to facilitate the emergence of vibrant exchange markets for private goods in which the traditional role of marketing plays out. This article helps develop a better appreciation of a typically overlooked dimension in marketing's relationship to society in developing countries.

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Beneficiary assessment is a tool that can provide project personnel with information about community-based factors that may foster or limit social sector project success. The method is described as involving participant observation and intensive qualitative interviewing in the project communities by nationals trained to develop information attuned to the needs of local project management. This review presents the evidence accumulated from use of beneficiary assessment in World Bank projects since its introduction in 1982, examining how it has been utiltzed and to what effect, together with observations on how it may, in the future, be operationalized more extensively. These experiences illustrate a number of insights to be gained from use of this method: adequate communication between project staff and beneficiaries is often lacking; ignorance of the various social strata within the community can lead to inequitable/in efficient implementation; the role of community participation in project success is not always sufficiently understood; and there is a demonstrated need for project management to understand the living conditions, economic realities, and felt needs of beneficiaries.

Listening is essentiul to understanding, and understanding is the basis of competent evuluutim. Systematic client consultation is on the way to becoming a primary ingredient of project identijication and design. Systematic listening providesfeedback neededfor accurate and relevant evaluation.

Since the early 1970s, the World Bank has recognized that economic growth alone will not reduce poverty. Yet it has not fully accepted the fact that effective poverty reduction requires a ‘learning process approach’, rather than the ‘blueprint approach’ commonly used by development agencies. To facilitate the learning process approach, the Bank should consider using qualified intermediary, grass‐roots, and non‐governmental organizations (NGOs); stimulating pluralism and competition; and encouraging cooperation between central and local institutions. However, helping the poor is going to require more administrative resources than heretofore provided, making funds available for careful and flexible project design, staff exposure to poverty conditions and programmes, training in and recruitment of appropriate interdisciplinary fields, monitoring and evaluation, and continual project revision.