Marketing to the Bottom of the Pyramid – Opportunities in Emerging Markets

The significance of emerging economies to global marketing, within a context of a paradigm shift of international business is enormous. With more manageable risks, ease of communications and transportation, higher income growth and increasing consumer purchasing power, there are new opportunities for multinational corporations to both sell to and low cost, high quality resources to buy from. However, emerging markets do not consist of one market. They are diverse and can require separate market entry and market development strategies. This paper will look at these opportunities through the lenses of two theories the Bottom of the Pyramid theory and Blue Ocean theory. The Bottom of the Pyramid has been pioneered by Prahalad and London and Hart to identify the potential of emerging markets not only as resource suppliers but as a market. The Blue Ocean theory will be used to see the potential of shifting paradigms in regards to emerging markets to identify a leap in value for both consumers and producers. The purpose of this paper is to show that emerging markets have two separate areas of opportunity for multinational corporations: to buy and to sell