The Promotion of Appropriate Products in Developing Countries

The chapters that comprise Part One above have a decidedly asymmetrical focus. For while they devote considerable attention to the extent and nature of the influence that is exerted on consumption patterns in developing countries by the promotion of products from the industrialized nations, these chapters pay little or no attention to the promotion of alternative (and what were described as) more appropriate patterns of consumption. From a policy point of view, this imbalance needs to be redressed partly because — as we seek first to demonstrate below — in many of the most successful cases of appropriate products in the private sector (which have recently emerged from the Indian experience), promotion appears to have played a crucial role. Furthermore, interpreted in a broader sense to include what are regarded as socially desirable product innovations (such as oral rehydration therapy), appropriate products are introduced by developing country governments over a wide range of areas (such as health, sanitation and nutrition) and the efficacy of these efforts also depends partly on the nature and form of the promotional activities that are undertaken. More specifically there is growing evidence that much can be learnt by governments in these endeavours from methods of marketing that are usually employed for commercial purposes.