Creating Shared Value in BoP communities with Micro-manufacturing Factories: A Systematized Literature Review

Abstract

Background: Shared value creation in Base of the Pyramid (BoP) communities is a crucial process towards building sustainable societies. BoP communities in developing countries represent more than four billion people who live on low incomes with limited access to basic products and services. Current or emerging technologies offer promising solutions for organisations pursuing manufacturing opportunities in BoP communities. This study seeks to explore the literature on how BoP communities may become active participants in sustainably manufacturing products using micro-manufacturing factories. The research question posed is: What are the core concepts that need to be taken into consideration for creating shared value through micro-manufacturing factories in BoP communities? Method: A Systematised Literature review (SLR) was completed following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) method for data selection criteria and analysis. The SLR is used to explore the state of literature with regards to creating manufacturing shared value in BoP communities with the objective to identify study gaps and to explore shared value creation concepts. Results: Literature indicates BoP initiatives that have pursued to engage BoP communities through various innovation strategies. The findings of the review is organised under three strategic pillars: Capability building strategy, Implementation process, and Growth strategy. The capability building strategy defines the users’ intention to create shared value in BoP communities with Micro-manufacturing factories (MMF). It is followed by the implementation process which guides the users to create manufacturing shared value in BoP communities. This is followed by a growth strategy to scale for impact.

Marketing at the bottom of the pyramid: Literature review and future research agenda

“…Traditional marketing literature in marketing has scantily focused on the BOP consumer and market. Adding to this, the scope of prior BoP‐focused SLRs stands limited to specific areas (such as aspirational consumption, value‐creation, supply chain) (Chihambakwe et al, 2021; Srivastava et al., 2020; Zomorrodi et al, 2019) or a pre‐defined context such as poverty alleviation (Dembek et al, 2020) or international business models (Lappeman, Ransome, et al., 2019). This leads to an inaccurate presentation of BoP markets in the overall encompassing umbrella of marketing.…”

“…(1) the current study offers a synthesis of two decades of research in the context while previous marketing-focused SLRs (Mulky, 2011) do not take into account recent literature, (2) the present study focuses on whole gamut of marketing and market-specific BoP studies, whereas previous reviews (Agarwal et al, 2016;Chihambakwe et al, 2021;Mortazavi et al, 2020;Srivastava et al, 2020;Zomorrodi et al, 2019) focus on any one specific marketing aspect of BoP,and (3) this study synthesizes marketing domain of BoP research, whereas many previous SLRs (Dembek et al, 2020;Follman, 2012;Kolk et al, 2014) focus on BoP research in general.…”