Selling to the Poor

Searching for new customers eager to buy your products? Forget Tokyo's schoolgirls and Milan's fashionistas. Instead, try the world's 4 billion poor people, the largest untapped consumer market on Earth. To reach them, CEOs must shed old concepts of marketing, distribution, and research. Getting it right can both generate big profits and help end economic isolation throughout the developing world.

BY ALLEN L. HAMMOND, C.K. PRAHALAD | MAY 1, 2004

When the Indian industrial and technology conglomerate ITC started building a network of Internet-connected computers called "e-Choupals" in farming villages in India's rural state of Madhya Pradesh in 2001, soy farmers were suddenly able to check fair market prices for their crops. Some farmers began tracking soy futures on the Chicago Board of Trade, and soon most of them were bypassing local auction markets and...

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Allen L. Hammond is vice president for innovation and director of the digital dividends project at the World Resources Institute. C.K. Prahalad is Harvey C. Fruehauf professor of business administraion at the University of Michigan Business School and author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profit (Philadelphia: Wharton School Publishing, 2004). He is a member of the board of directors of Hindustan Lever Ltd.

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