IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijeima/v4y2004i5p495-511.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Case study: Hindustan Lever Limited and marketing to the poorest of the poor

Author

Listed:
  • Pia Sabharwal Ahmad
  • Michael E. Gorman
  • Patricia H. Werhane

Abstract

In the 1970s, the early marketing activities of Hindustan-Lever in India tended to focus upon the urban middle class and elite. Meanwhile, an Indian entrepreneur produced and marketed a detergent, Nirma, targeting the poor rural sector. By 1977, Nirma was the second largest volume seller in the country. The paper suggests that the common description of the bottom-of-pyramid market segment as the disorganised sector can have a psychological impact on marketing strategy formulation, over and above the real effects of absent infrastructures. The classic Nirma story helps us to re-frame and re-describe prospects for serving this market segment. For example, it can be a base-camp from which an MNC can launch a very effective attack upon all levels of the pyramid.

Suggested Citation

  • Pia Sabharwal Ahmad & Michael E. Gorman & Patricia H. Werhane, 2004. "Case study: Hindustan Lever Limited and marketing to the poorest of the poor," International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 4(5), pages 495-511.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijeima:v:4:y:2004:i:5:p:495-511
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=5757
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Surendra Arjoon & Alvaro Turriago-Hoyos & Ulf Thoene, 2018. "Virtuousness and the Common Good as a Conceptual Framework for Harmonizing the Goals of the Individual, Organizations, and the Economy," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 143-163, January.
    2. Yamin, Mo & Sinkovics, Rudolf R., 2009. "Infrastructure or foreign direct investment?: An examination of the implications of MNE strategy for economic development," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 144-157, April.
    3. Varsha Khandker, 2023. "Two decades of the bottom of the pyramid research: identifying the influencers, structure, and the evolution of the concept," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 73(3), pages 1151-1178, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijeima:v:4:y:2004:i:5:p:495-511. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=7 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.