Boston Consulting Group on Decoding the Next Billion Consumers

Abigail Keene-Babcock — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:15:01 -0500

In recent months, Boston Consulting Group's publications have tackled various aspects of BoP strategy, which Manuel and Julia have covered in detail. From a high-level point of view, this is a positive trend, reflecting growing interest among BCG's clients – large private sector corporations – in better understanding and exploring BoP markets. And from a branding perspective, I couldn’t be happier that BCG has chosen "Next Billion" as the catchphrase tying these publications together.

BCG's most recent publication, Decoding the Next Billion Customers (PDF), briefly but jauntily describes six ways that BoP consumers are different from other consumer segments, and provides a few hints about what this means for those interested in developing products for and marketing to BoP customers. Mainly, these six points are common sense observations about circumstances that influence low-income individuals' purchasing decisions:

They manage fluctuating incomes
They cope with domestic [spatial] constraints
They are unfamiliar with many products
They are smart shoppers
They look for trusted advice
They demand respect

When compressed altogether, however, these facts and their implications present a challenging and exciting picture – especially for companies scouting around for new marketing opportunities. What's helpful here is that BCG gets right to the visible and straightforward day-to-day differences that influence low-income customers' value calculations and decision-making without going into long narratives about their socioeconomic limitations.

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Boston Consulting Group on Decoding the Next Billion Consumers