Influences on financial decision making among the rural poor in Bangladesh

This thesis gives a voice to the chronically poor people of rural Bangladesh, enabling them to tell their own stories about the nature of their financial decision making which is taking place within the marketing systems that are operating in all poor villages in the region. Financial decision making behaviour is explored and the ―subtleties associated with the marketing flows linking system participants” (Layton 2007 P 239) are considered in terms of the implications for the impact on and consequences of the financial decisions being made in the context of the lived realities of these chronically poor communities. Understanding consumers and their behaviour is at the core of marketing yet much of what we know has been derived from empirical studies of consumers in western countries. More than 80% of the world's consumers are living in emerging consumer markets and transitional economies where very little consumer research has been conducted (Steenkamp and Burgess 2002; Burgess and Steenkamp 2006) and ―the further advancement of consumer research as an academic discipline requires that the validity of our theories and models and their degree of generalizability and boundary conditions be examined in non-Western, emerging market contexts‖ (Steenkamp and Burgess, 2002 p 131). Also most consumer research tends to ignore poorer segments of the market (Chambers 1995; Chakravarti 2006; Duflo 2006). Bangladesh was chosen for this study because it is typical of ―non-Western, emerging market contexts” (Steenkamp and Burgess, 2002 pp 131) and because it has become a focal point for trials of microfinance offerings (Morduch 1998; Ferrari 2008; Hoque 2008). Financial dealings within this context are known to be complex (Matin, Hulme et al. 1999; Rutherford 2002) and, despite the rapid growth of microfinance, these financial dealings still occur most often through informal networks within close knit communities Seibel 2001; Matin, Hulme et al. 2002)