Niti Bhan, the mind behind Perspective 2.0 and the Emerging Futures Lab, doesn’t waste time by sugar-coating her message. She starts and ends her talk telling it like it is: “Life is hard.” In this hard life, people, particularly the billions of people living at the bottom of the pyramid, are continually faced with hard choices. With limited funds, many parents are dealt with trying to figure out which child to buy shoes for or whether to buy food now or buy tools that would assure a lot more food in the future. There is a new movement to think of people in the BoP as potential customers, but not so many people understand that they are also very effective strategic money managers.
People who are interested in designing products for these customers, need to understand the circumstances and value systems under which they make purchasing decisions.
Circumstances:Life is hard
see haiti game of life****
complex value processing for daily survival – constantly juggling income against expenses
familiar with loans, barter, swap, trade, credit, interest rates but not in those terms- yet majority are not banking or even aware of things like ATM;s, banks, credit cards, etc
budgeting, hording, and management of airtime minutes where cost is prohibitive
Purchasing patterns on irregular and unpredictable incomes
how do we create transaction models
buying in bulk (fixed remittances, pensioners, grants for students, migrants workers sending money homes)
pay as you go prepaid model (eskom distrib – prepaid electricity)
sachet marketing or single use low cost package (see next 4 billion) – 
seen as a success, works for some things but not others
rama – margarine
on demand, within constraints (when you have cash, you can buy a portion of a vegetable) in new dehli… 2 eggs and a 1/4 cabbage
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every purchase is an investment, folks trying to Maximizing return on investment
how do you explain the success of unilever.
repair and renew. not bought with 9-12 month replacement cycle, does it have a resale value (a lot of people are using end of life phones)
reuse and refurbish
example used mufflers
preventive care to extend lifespan (plastic wrapped tv)
BoP “consumer ‘ mindset
tradeoff
max inROI
min risk
strat $ mngt
high ‘bullshit’ meter, folks are very cynical
proof of performance
Mainstream consumer culture vs. BoP customer = Values Gap
tried and true over new and improved
pay as you go over buy now and pay later
recyclle and reuse over throwaway and replace
life is had, make it easy to choose and easy to use
erickson – 30 bucks phone
45 – phone
principles to bridge the values gap
uncover and map the values gap – compare existing solutions available and their proposition as it maps on to the values/mindset for the BOP market. The gaps are the opportunity spaces for innovation
maximize constraints, minimize resources
maximize teh freemium – help ensure greater user acceptance and lowers the dropout rate in the BOP market
ex flickr, a way to try, then they are hooked
cross pollination first – why reinvent the wheel when you can use it as a precursor or first prototype from which to build you eventual solution
ex. a lot of what is coming out of afrigadget are first precursors of what will work contextually.
You know if would be great to have a
Question: theory of marketing; implementation
bhan moves away from the word consumer – consumer consume (devour) and the world cannot … if the other 90% consume at the rates of the richest 10% ; prefers customers, clients
Advertising and marketing communications in India
she doesn’t want to be a legend, she wants to be the voice of the people
Life is hard
women are the bottom of the pyramid in the 3rd world
she doesn’t want them to be consumers