Policy‐related implementational fluidity in subsistence marketplaces

This paper sheds light on policy‐related implementational fluidity—a context‐dependent adaptation of policies—adopted by policy implementers to address heterogeneous needs of subsistence consumer‐merchants (SCMs). In subsistence research, despite the emphasis on bottom‐up policymaking, implementational fluidity persists because of institutional and sociocultural factors that hinder policy implementers’ from effectively and accurately implementing the policies. To enrich the current bottom‐up policy process, this paper shares insights from an ethnographic study of Fijian market traders and marketplace personnel (policy implementers) and shares insights on how implementational fluidity manifests in subsistence marketplaces. Analysis reveals the interplay amongst sociohistorical context, marketplace relational dynamics and policies leading to policy adjustments and re‐negotiation by marketplace personnel and perceived injustices amongst the SCMs. The paper provides policy recommendations and practice ideas for subsistence researchers and policy practitioners to examine policy implementation gaps and the role of policy implementers in subsistence marketplaces.     

Introduction to the special section on subsistence marketplaces

We provide an introduction to the special issue on subsistence marketplaces. We briefly describe the stream of subsistence marketplaces, and the conference series associated with the call for papers. We provide a brief overview of the diverse set of papers in the special section.     

Unequal but essential: How subsistence consumer–entrepreneurs negotiate unprecedented shock with extraordinary resilience during COVID‐19

We use qualitative interviews to study subsistence consumers confronting the global, pervasive and extended challenges of COVID‐19, encompassing literally all realms of daily life. For subsistence consumers whose circumstances are filled with day‐to‐day uncertainty and a small margin of error to begin with, the pandemic has led to manifold uncertainties and a disappearing margin of error, with potentially lethal consequences. Their constraints to thinking and lack of self‐confidence arising from both low income and low literacy are magnified in the face of the complex, invisible pandemic and the fear and panic it has caused. Characteristic relational strengths are weakened with social distancing and fear of infection. Yet, subsistence consumers display humanity in catastrophe, and confront the uncontrollable by reiterating a higher power. Consumption is reduced to the very bare essentials and income generation involves staying the course versus finding any viable alternative. We derive implications for consumer affairs.     

Consumer well‐being and social responsibility of subsistence entrepreneurs in subsistence marketplace

Business malpractices, such as the sale of overpriced, underweight and adulterated foodstuffs and essential commodities, can pose serious threats to subsistence consumers' wellbeing, given they are more vulnerable than their affluent counterparts. Drawing on 40 interviews with subsistence entrepreneurs in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, our findings provide insights into the interplay between religiosity and social responsibility of entrepreneurs. We further explore how socio‐economic conditions and local embeddedness—two important characteristics of individuals in subsistence marketplaces—moderate the relationship between religiosity and social responsibility of entrepreneurs, providing implications for consumer welfare at the macro‐level. Our research makes a distinctive contribution to three streams of literature relating to social responsibility, subsistence marketplaces, and consumer affairs, with specific policy implications.     

Understanding consumption and entrepreneurship in subsistence marketplaces

This article describes exploratory research on how consumers and small entrepreneurs navigate subsistence marketplaces, with particular emphasis on social networks, a central characteristic of these contexts. Existing studies have characterized subsistence contexts as 1-to-1 interactional marketplaces due to the prevalence of face-to-face interactions among consumers and sellers when evaluating products, making purchases, and operating small businesses. This research uses survey methods to study these networks, paying particular attention to how individuals interact within them, the kind of information being shared, their influence on purchase decisions and business decisions, and finally, their impact on the marketplace skills of subsistence consumers and entrepreneurs. Consideration of both consumers and entrepreneurs provides perspective on the role of social networks from both sides of the business transaction. The article also discusses implications for business research and practice.     

Envisioning a community‐centric approach to impact assessments in subsistence marketplaces

What does a community‐centric approach to impact assessment look like? That is the central question addressed in this article. Our community‐centric perspective provides an alternative to discipline‐centric approaches to impact assessment that emphasize specific methodological gold‐standards (e.g., randomized controlled trials [RCTs] in development economics). Disciplinary approaches to impact assessment owe their principal allegiance to the discipline's knowledge‐creation norms. Consequently, the concerns, interests, and voices of community members are not fully captured in the impact assessment process. In this article, we flip the conventional perspective to offer a community‐centric view of impact assessment that places the concerns, interests and voices of community members front and center. We present the case for why we need a community‐centric approach to impact assessment and clarify its axiological content, theoretical perspective, and methodological stance. Specifically, we advocate for a relational axiology, a system‐theoretic perspective, and a phenomenological methodology.     

Marketplace literacy education and coping behaviors among subsistence consumer–entrepreneurs during demonetization in India

We study the impact of marketplace literacy education on marketplace coping behaviors in the face of systemic shock due to demonetization, deriving important implications for consumer affairs from this radically distinct context. We study whether and how such education can have positive impact even in the face of such macrolevel disruption that disproportionately affects those with the least resources and renders them even more vulnerable. Marketplace literacy education encompasses awareness and knowledge about marketing as well as self‐confidence and awareness of rights as buyers and sellers. We examine the influence of marketplace literacy in urban and rural areas on coping behaviors of low‐income women consumer–entrepreneurs during demonetization in India, using a retrospective survey. We derive implications to mitigate the effect of future shocks on consumers and entrepreneurs at the vulnerable end of the income spectrum.     

Fostering fair and sustainable marketing for social entrepreneurs in the context of subsistence marketplaces

Abstract

In recent years, in-depth, on-the-ground research has generated many insights into the nature and functioning of subsistence marketplaces and the people who operate in them. Such knowledge is bound to be useful to various companies and organisations, as they seek to engage such marketplaces, particularly for marketing managers, who quite likely have not had education or experience in marketing in such impoverished settings. This paper complements these practical insights with a normative ethical framework, presented in the marketing literature and labelled the integrative justice model (IJM) for impoverished markets, so as to synthesise a new framework for fair and sustainable marketing for social entrepreneurs in the context of subsistence marketplaces.     

Extreme exclusion and relative deprivation in subsistence marketplaces: A study in a refugee settlement in Nakivale,Uganda

We study how refugees in a settlement face extreme marketplace exclusion through three phases of qualitative research. Overlaying the context of subsistence marketplaces, such exclusion is accentuated by refugee status, fleeing from unimaginable suffering. We interpret our findings in terms of relative deprivation, or the state of feeling deprived relative to some social reference, often used to understand how consumers feel deprived in terms of their relative financial status. We extend relative deprivation theory in research, introducing extreme marketplace deprivation. Whereas most relative deprivation research emphasizes social comparisons to other people, our study of the refugee settlement demonstrates the adverse effects of intrapersonal relative deprivation, that is, feeling deprived relative to one's past. We develop a theoretical framework to demarcate types of extreme marketplace deprivation, classifying these experiences in terms of consumption and livelihood along three facets (material, social, and psychological). We derive implications for consumer affairs.     

Quality‐of‐life as chronotopefication and futurization: Subsistence consumer experiences in India

In the poverty‐ridden settings in neo‐liberal India, we explore how subsistence consumers construct their quality‐of‐life (QOL). Drawing on the concepts of chronotope and futurization, we posit two additional dimensions of subsistence consumers' construction of QOL namely, chronotopefication and futurization. Our findings suggest that chronotopefication and futurization are defining processes of subsistence consumers' construction of QOL perceptions; their sacrifices, efforts, and costs, however painful they may be, would be perceived as QOL enhancing from the prism of chronotopefication and futurization; and subsistence consumers chronotopize and futurize QOL for the whole extended household within the intergenerational temporal space by focusing on stable input–outcome pathways. Based on the evidence, we propose QOL as chronotopefication and futurization framework (QOL‐CFF). The framework suggests that subsistence consumers construct QOL as chronotope building, futurized and having a symbolic effect. They consider current agonies as a foundation for future building.     

What the subsistence marketplaces stream is really about: Beginning with micro-level understanding and being bottom-up

This commentary reiterates the essence of the subsistence marketplaces stream in light of the focal paper. The subsistence marketplaces stream provides a granular, micro-level understanding of the intersection of poverty and marketplaces. The term ‘subsistence marketplaces’ was deliberately coined to keep the focus on preexisting marketplaces to learn from in order to design solutions for all contexts. Such marketplaces should be studied in their own right, and not as a means to a preconceived end, whether it be for outside companies or government policy and so forth. We study subsistence marketplaces inside-out rather than outside-in – beginning at the micro level and being bottom-up in deriving implications for many sectors of society. We traverse a journey which is in the opposite direction to beginning with ideological lenses, wherein we have developed an ecosystem of research, forums, curricular innovations and community outreach.     

Understanding subsistence marketplaces: Toward sustainable consumption and commerce for a better world

This article provides the background and the events leading up to this special issue, and the composition of articles that follow. This special issue includes articles that take a bottom-up approach in understanding and explaining subsistence marketplaces, focusing on individual, communal, and cultural factors that influence consumers and entrepreneurs who live at or near subsistence, and who comprise a majority of the world's population. This bottom-up focus is distinct and complementary to the macro-level economic development and mid-level business strategy (e.g., base of the pyramid) approaches to the role of business in poverty alleviation. This special issue consists largely of papers based on presentations at the second subsistence marketplace conference held in Chicago in 2008, with articles and essays reflecting a healthy commingling of disciplinary perspectives that cuts across social and commercial enterprises.     

The Village Network™: Partnership and collaboration to alleviate poverty in subsistence marketplaces

The Village Network is a unique model of poverty alleviation involving the collaboration of a host subsistence market community and a nonprofit organization, typically a university, with a multidisciplinary academic module. All parties in this partnership stand to gain from collaboration. The subsistence market benefits from the skill set and labor provided by the university. The university benefits by placing their students in a position to apply theory guided by the social and economic development experience and insights of the indigenous village leadership. The coordinating organization improves relationships and fosters growth in developing communities. The discussion then focuses on insights about subsistence marketplaces that emerge from this initiative.     

Fuel-efficient stoves for Darfur: The social construction of subsistence marketplaces in post-conflict settings

This paper explores the development of market roles and transactions in fuel-efficient stoves in Darfur from 1997 to 2008 as a grounded example of how subsistence markets are socially constructed in post-conflict settings. Using a combination of archival texts, interviews, and real-time discourses by protagonists, this study explains the who, what, why and how of emergent marketplaces by showing how development interventions come to imbue market participants and transactions with socially (re)constructed meanings. The fitful emergence of subsistence marketplaces for fuel-efficient in Darfur is punctuated by development interventions which at times under- or misrepresent market participants and by successes and failures in bringing together trainers, producers, sellers, consumers and users of fuel-efficient stoves. Subsidies and handouts delay and distort the emergence of grassroots demand, choices, and prices; a plurality of competing development interventions re-shape the supply. By the end of 2008, the subsistence market for fuel-efficient stoves catches momentum, engaging over 52% of the Darfuri communities in market transactions for the product. As market participants gain voice and influence they reshape the market to favour mud stoves over metal stoves. Reports by several development organizations suggest that among fuel-efficient stove users, 90% use mud models, and 49% of women who own both mud and metal stoves prefer mud stoves.     

Exploring unheard voices: Best practices in interviewing women prosumers in Indian subsistence contexts

A growing body of literature is focused on subsistence markets and how marketing interventions can increase well-being for those whose daily existence is a struggle to ensure access to necessities of life. To understand the lifeworld of those living at the subsistence level, interviews are favored as a data collection tool. This methodological paper examines interviewing in the subsistence context with a focus on women whose lived experiences are affected by the intersection of gender, power imbalance, and culture. The study context is India. Specifically, we draw upon data from three previous author-conducted academic studies and conduct a reflective analysis that leads to a series of reflections and recommendations for the interview process. This paper calls for more work to be done in the area and raises the need for a new research paradigm rather than reliance on western-oriented approaches that may not fit the context.     

Consumers as legitimating agents: How consumer‐citizens challenge marketer legitimacy on social media

Previous research has shown that consumers increasingly challenge the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online contexts. Based on a qualitative study, this article examines how and for what reasons consumers challenge marketer legitimacy—the perceived appropriateness of marketers and their activities—in the empirical context of Reddit, a popular social news and community website. The study suggests that consumers challenge or accept marketer legitimacy in online communities based on particular, community and situation specific, legitimacy criteria that reflect and reproduce the values and norms of the community. In doing so, it is argued, consumers play a role as legitimating agents—consumer‐citizens that have the power to confer or deny legitimacy in the context of business‐society relations. Overall, the study advances knowledge in the field of consumer studies in two ways. First, it builds a symbolic interactionist perspective on consumer‐citizens as legitimating agents who enact their active citizenship role in the marketplace by assessing and constructing marketer legitimacy in online communities. Second, it offers an empirically grounded account of how and for what reasons consumer‐citizens challenge or accept the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online communities.     

Consumer creativity influenced by hope,integral emotions and socio‐economic status

Low socio economic stratum (SES) consumers face constrains that engender creativity as they try to solve consumption problems using the scant products and services available by repurposing such products. This research investigates mechanisms by which hope and integral emotions interact with SES to influence consumer creativity. Experiments with low and high SES participants in an emerging economy show that when hope is enhanced, positive integral emotions are directed to creativity by all consumers, but when hope is diminished, positive integral emotions are not consistently directed to creativity. SES exerts a moderating role when hope is diminished, and only high SES participants are able to cope with the absence of hope by redirecting dominance feelings to creativity. Results suggest that increasing hope among low SES consumers can enhance their creativity, and that hope can be enhanced through actions undertaken by companies and public organizations.     

A corporate entrepreneurship perspective of pre‐entry strategies for internationalization: A case study of a Chinese business conglomerate

The international expansion of Chinese firms is a remarkable phenomenon of contemporary international business. However, international expansion is particularly challenging for firms expanding from emerging market economies such as China because they have relatively few ownership advantages and suffer disadvantages. We apply a corporate entrepreneurship perspective to explore this under‐researched topic via a longitudinal case study of a large Chinese business conglomerate. Thirty‐one semistructured interviews and seven focus‐group discussions were conducted with 55 informants; company documents were also analyzed. We found sophisticated pre‐entry entrepreneurial initiatives are critical for successful internationalization, as they enable emerging market firms to overcome some constraints, leverage their assets, and build competences for international venturing.     

A meta‐analytic investigation of consumer over‐indebtedness: The role of impulsivity

In the past decade, evidence has been accumulated on the relationship between impulsivity and over‐indebtedness. Nevertheless, the magnitude of such association is still considered marginal compared to traditional socio‐demographic and economic factors, with the important consequence that impulsivity continues to be ignored in policy interventions for preventing and dealing with over‐indebtedness. The aim of this study was to meta‐analyse existing studies to answer the question: Are higher levels of impulsivity associated with greater over‐indebtedness? Scopus and Web of Science databases were searched for English language studies. Seventeen studies were eligible for the analysis. The random effect model yielded a significant positive association between impulsivity and over‐indebtedness (Hedges' g = .40). Type of over‐indebtedness (debt holding vs. unmanageable debt) and work status (percentage of employed individuals) significantly moderated this association. Results are discussed in terms of implications and recommendations for future research, policy and practice.     

Crescive entrepreneurship in complex social problems: Institutional conditions for entrepreneurial engagement

This paper explores entrepreneurship in the context of complex social problems (often referred to as ‘social’ entrepreneurship). Most management research in this area studies the entrepreneurs; we explore the institutional conditions which frame the likelihood of entrepreneurial engagement. We name these conditions ‘crescive’ and, following A.O. Hirschman's studies on institutional conditions for development we identify two analytically different sets of conditions: those that can stir up actors' motivations to engage and those that can alter their decision making logic. Our exploration of crescive conditions yields a novel conceptual model for entrepreneurial engagement in the context of complex social problems, which we label ‘crescive entrepreneurship’ and place in a space between functionalist and institutional action.