Could global poverty be eradicated if multinational corporations recognised the poor as a powerful consumer market?
Governments and charities battle to ease the lives of the 4 billion people living on less than $2 per day against statistics that can seem overwhelming. But spin this on its head and another picture emerges. Leading business thinker C. K. Prahalad, (University of Michigan Business School and author of new book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid), believes that global poverty can be eradicated through the involvement of multinational corporations (MNCs), not as a charity or CSR project, but via them treating this invisible but powerful market at the bottom of the economic pyramid as consumers. The 18 largest emerging economies have 680 million households with an average annual income of +/- $6,000. Translate that into an opportunity and it equates to an untapped market worth $1.7 billion. A market waiting to be recognised and served. The challenge here is one that will drive business forward: how to innovate to deliver products and services that are acceptable to and attainable by
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