IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/isbchp/978-3-319-46392-6_5.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Consumer Innovation in the Poor Versus Rich World: Some Differences and Similarities

In: Lead Market India

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Praceus

    (Hamburg University of Technology)

  • Cornelius Herstatt

    (Hamburg University of Technology)

Abstract

Innovative, distinct products and no “cheaper” copies of the “rich” world are essential in order to succeed at the “Base of the Pyramid” (BoP). However, this type of innovation requires more, in-depth information on the BoP and solution spaces, which are both difficult to access. Literature proposes to generate innovations bottom up through user involvement but remains silent on how to identify and integrate BoP consumers into the innovation process. One obvious solution is to connect up with and cooperate with innovating consumers of the BoP. However, this raises the questions whether (1) user innovation exists at the BoP at what levels of quality and (2) how firms can support the innovators to implement them into real world solutions. In this paper we specifically address the first question and analyze patterns and characteristics of a large sample of innovations developed by people living at the Indian BoP collected by the Indian National Innovation Foundation (NIF). We compare these innovations to consumer innovations in the developed world and examine effects of demographic, knowledge and context factors on innovation activity and the outcome. We find similarities with consumer innovation in the developed world and at the same time adaptations to the BoP context, e.g. fulfillment of rather basic necessities than hobby-related needs. Innovation quality is mostly driven by the innovator’s knowledge and market recognition is highest for creative innovations developed for others. The paper further shows that consumer innovations are a good starting point for firms seeking solutions for BoP markets. Product needs can be systematically deducted and provide insights on how to identify promising consumer innovators at the BoP. Finally, this research contributes to better understand user innovation behavior in a specific context and by that enriches innovation research.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Praceus & Cornelius Herstatt, 2017. "Consumer Innovation in the Poor Versus Rich World: Some Differences and Similarities," India Studies in Business and Economics, in: Cornelius Herstatt & Rajnish Tiwari (ed.), Lead Market India, pages 97-117, Springer.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:isbchp:978-3-319-46392-6_5
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-46392-6_5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Yu, Xin & Zhang, Ting & Bogers, Marcel L.A.M., 2023. "Why do user innovators want to pursue user entrepreneurship? On the influence of the communitarian identity," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).
    2. Chen, Jin & Su, Yu-Shan & de Jong, Jeroen P.J. & von Hippel, Eric, 2020. "Household sector innovation in China: Impacts of income and motivation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(4).
    3. Mulhuijzen, Max & de Jong, Jeroen P.J., 2023. "The rich or the poor? Personal resources, do-it-yourself, and innovation in the household sector," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(3).

    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:spr:isbchp:978-3-319-46392-6_5. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.