The Bottom-of-the-Pyramid (BoP) segment in emerging markets represents a major growth potential for firms, including multinational enterprises (MNEs) from developed countries. However, the continued lack of success of MNEs in these markets has shown that generic one size-fits-all strategies for the BoP are not appropriate as BoP contexts differ between countries. Current frameworks for analysing business sectors in emerging markets do take into account inter-country differences but fail to recognize intra-country differences, which causes them to fall short on their applicability to the BoP. This research fills the gap how frameworks for analysing business sectors in emerging markets can be made applicable for the BoP. Such frameworks have to take into account both the local context-dependent and general factors of a BoP-market to analyse it for opportunities, threats, and eventually and strategic entry mode. This leads to the following open research question: ‘How does a framework for analysing business sectors in emerging markets look like when taking into account the local context dependent and general factors of the BoP?’. To answer this research question, two experts on the BoP and eight managers at MNEs with activities in the BoP have been interviewed to collect rich data. Based on these results an additional analysis, BoP-orientation, and further extensions to the original analyses are being presented. This results in an advanced framework for analysing business sectors in emerging markets.
The paper has been published in the June 2021 issue of Central European Review of Economics and Management (CEREM). It can be accessed via: https://lnkd.in/dGBpBmE