Redefining the bottom of the pyramid from a marketing perspective

Abstract

Marketing literature has remained mostly silent on the issue of conceptualization of poverty, relying instead on the available definitions of the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) “poor” from economics and sociology. Consequently, in marketing theory, the analytic bases and the practical implications of poverty-centered discourses sometimes remain ambiguous. This study provides a broader, culture-linked conceptualization of poverty and BOP from a consumer research perspective, initiating a dialogue on bottom-up approaches to understanding what poverty means through the lenses of the poor. Via qualitative methods such as semistructured individual in-depth interviews, observations, and fieldnotes, deeper insights were sought on how poverty can be defined from the perspectives of the poor. Transcending the economic-only approach, this study contributes to the literature by extending the contours of “felt poverty” and of the “poverty line” beyond the biogenic and stark utilitarian needs and incorporates the sociocultural dimensions of consumption. Our contribution comes from including the effects of the global consumer culture as a major source of social deprivation. Furthermore—while supporting the positions that the definitions of BOP are relative to contexts, cultures, and times—we also situate the discussion of BOP within the broader discourse on globalization of markets and consumption practices.

Keywords

Anti-poverty policies bottom of the pyramid (BOP)brand consumption poverty poverty line

Introduction

The vital minimum today, the minimum of imposed consumption, is the standard package. Beneath this level, you are an outcast. Is loss of status—or social non-existence—less upsetting than hunger?

Baudrillard (1969: 73)

Poverty remains one of the fundamental problems of humanity. In terms of the stark economical United Nations (UN)-set standard of US$1.25/day, there has been some progress: The number of “extremely poor” has declined to nearly 800 million people (UNDP Sustainable Development Goals Booklet, 2015: 3). While there is some comfort in such statistics based on the minimal level of income, when the line is set in terms of not subsistence but “decent” living conditions of US$10/day, 71% of the world population is considered “vulnerable” (Pew Research Center, 2015: 17). Even more critical, as Baudrillard (1969) sharply points out, these decent living standards need redefining beyond the stark starvation level, a level applicable only to the precultural basic needs where any food will do (Slater, 1997).

Previous debates on the measurement and definition of poverty, especially in the economics literature, reveal the complexity of the problem. The most popular literature stream has relied on the monetary approach, measuring (and consequently, defining) poverty by daily money wage level. Poverty lines such as US$1.25/day (extreme poverty), US$2/day (poverty), and US$10/day (vulnerability) are used as the cutoff levels in various poverty-related discussions, leading to very different populations to investigate. New perspectives—based on consumption practices and marketing activities—can be helpful in pinpointing who the poor are in varying global settings, in terms of particular markets and segments of markets.

Economics and sociology have been the major domains for the conceptualization of poverty. Marketing literature has been mostly mute on this issue, although the contemporary (brand and media saturated) consumer culture has major impacts on the “felt deprivation” of the poor. An extended definition of the bottom of the income pyramid—from the perspectives of the poor and through the lens of consumer research—would improve our understanding of poverty and shed new light on ways to alleviate the problem.

Economic approaches: Neoclassical and institutional

The debates on the measurement and definition of poverty have focused mostly on issues such as the measurement unit (individual vs. household), the possible aggregation of multiple dimensions such as the material and social aspects, and the suitability of universal versus context-anchored definitions of bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) (Alkire, 2005; Atkinson, 1989; Rowntree, 1901; Room, 1999; Sen, 1983, 1985 , 1999; Townsend, 1979).

The most commonly used approach to measure and define poverty, especially in the economics literature, has been the income-based approach. Under this approach, a certain level of income (termed the “poverty line”) can be set as the boundary between the poor and the nonpoor (Atkinson, 1989; Anand and Ravallion, 1993; Lewis and Ulph, 1988; Rowntree, 1901; Ravallion, 1994, 2002). In spite of some differences across the studies in terms of which variables to consider in determining “the minimum level of resources,” there seems to be a consensus on including the variables of “basic necessities” of survival: food, clothing, and rent (Rowntree, 1901). This approach is consistent with the neoclassical theory of consumption which assumes that individuals—making fully rational consumption choices—seek utility maximization (Ackerman, 1997; Hayakawa and Venieris, 1977). Poverty, however, cannot be considered solely as an economic phenomenon (Laderchi et al. 2003). Determining the standards for the necessities of survival—as, for example, the amount of food or calories required for a nutritious diet—will differ from person to person (Laderchi et al., 2003). Furthermore, the neoclassical economic approach neglects the sociocultural aspects of consumption such as consuming for social acceptance and desirability.

Within the economics literature, criticizing the neoclassical monetary approach, Sen (1983, 1985, 1999) suggests that a capability-based evaluation is needed as a measure of well-being. Sen describes poverty as a failure to achieve certain capabilities, resulting in a deprivation of the freedom to live a valued life. External factors, such as a specific social and cultural context, affect the felt deprivation through constructing the expectations and perceptions of people in that particular context regarding what these capabilities are and in which circumstances these capabilities can be considered as achieved (Sen, 1985). Furthermore, as well as being context specific, the definition of BOP and the set of variables which should be included in a multidimensional definition may change over time. Extending Sen’s logic, we argue that—in the contemporary and connected world of mediascapes and technoscapes (Appadurai, 1990)—the “capability set” itself can also be context specific, having cultural as well as temporal dimensions.

Sen’s study is particularly important in terms of the capability set, as it includes capabilities like avoiding shame or social exclusion (Alkire, 2005; Gasper, 1997). Sen argues that for a person, avoiding shame is an absolute capability (in terms of achieving it or not) while the commodities one needs to acquire, to avoid shame, can be relative (Sen, 1983). One could then question how both the capability (avoiding shame) and the things required to achieve that capability (commodities) can remain invariant (over time) and absolute (non-context specific), in the contemporary society, given accelerating effects of globalization on consumer culture (see, e.g., Appadurai, 1990; Eckhardt and Mahi, 2012). Such invariance may hold in certain selected contexts; however, we believe it is increasingly difficult to establish such universal criteria due to the fast-paced temporal dynamics of globalization as well as the geospatial persistence of cultural differences.

Sociological approaches

When we look at the recent studies in the sociology literature on poverty, we see that the discussions and criticisms are focused on the arbitrariness of the poverty lines set by the World Bank and the one-dimensional measures of monetary poverty, which do not consider the nonmonetary forms of deprivations (Alkire and Foster, 2010; Deeming and Gubhaju, 2014; Rosenfeld, 2010; Townsend, 2002).

Similar to Sen’s capabilities, some of the studies in sociology and political science literatures take social participation and exclusion as the focal constructs for the definition of the BOP. Barry (1998: 1) defines social exclusion as the inability “to participate in the institutions patronized by the majority.” He emphasizes that social exclusion cannot be used interchangeably with poverty, but poverty can be considered as one of the major sources of social exclusion, along with other sources such as race and ethnicity. Poverty and social exclusion are interrelated in the sense that poverty often leads to social exclusion due to felt deprivation, and social exclusion may act as a perceived form of privation and poverty.

Along similar lines, Room (1999) argues that taking poverty only as a problem of distribution of resources leads to defining poverty narrowly from a resource-based approach. Consideration of the relational problems—such as lack of social participation, integration, and power (Room, 1999) as the source of poverty—shifts the discussion to the wider arena of social exclusion. While there are some studies in existing literature which employ both resource-based and exclusion perspectives (Townsend, 1979), Room (1999) argues that these studies still consider the unequal distribution of resources as the source of this inability to participate in the mainstream society. Although the social dimension of poverty has been raised as a concern in Townsend’s studies, we aim to carry these discussions one step further to include the inability to participate in consumer culture as a source of social deprivation.

Marketing and BOP studies

While some studies in consumer research literature have investigated the reasons and consequences of poverty in detail, the focus has typically not been on the definitions of poverty. Such studies treat poverty from particular perspectives, for example, the cultural aspects through defining the life and culture in poverty (Hill, 2002; Hill and Gaines, 2007; Hamilton, 2009; Üstüner and Holt, 2007) or anchor on the practical aspects, focusing on the consumption practices and coping strategies of the poor (Chakravarti, 2006; Duhachek, 2005; Elliot and Leonard, 2004; Hill, 1991 , 2001; Hill and Stamey, 1990; Hamilton and Catteral, 2005 , 2008; Henry, 2005; Ozanne et al., 1998; Martin and Hill, 2012; Üstüner and Holt, 2007). Some of the studies have adopted a social welfare perspective, mostly focusing on poverty alleviation strategies through the lens of marketers and consumer researchers (Baker et al., 2005; Blocker et al., 2013; Burroughs and Rindfleisch, 2012; Curtis, 2000; Hill, 1995 , 2008; Karpatkin, 1999; Ozanne et al., 1998; Prahalad and Hammond, 2002; Varman et al., 2012; Viswanathan and Sridharan, 2012).

In these studies, participants were selected based on varying criteria. While Hamilton’s (2009) study with single mothers used the criterion of having an average income of £150 per week, studies by Hill (1991) focused on homeless women in the shelter who were considered to be poor due to their severe life conditions. These studies also treated as given the available definitions of BOP from economics and sociology. Defining poverty from a consumer research perspective may, indeed, provide additional insights about the real conditions of the poor in an evolving global consumer culture and could help us in reaching a better and broader conceptualization of the topic.

Fieldwork methodology

Previous studies mostly adopted quantitative and survey-based approaches (Appleton and Booth, 2001) and did not strive for interpretive richness. Considering the gaps in the extant literature in terms of sociocultural investigations of poverty, a humanistic approach—which requires the indwelling of the researcher with the phenomena (Hirschman, 1986)—was adopted here. Qualitative data collection techniques were employed with the aim of gaining deeper insights into how the conceptualizations of poverty can be extended through the perspectives of the poor.

The research was conducted through semistructured individual in-depth interviews, observations, and interpretations of fieldnotes taken during and after the interviews. This study also employed ethnographic research techniques to collect data such as audio-recordings and photography to glean richer insights and understanding of the practices, experiences, and the culture of the low-income consumers (Agafonoff, 2006). Sixty in-depth interviews were conducted in Izmir, Turkey, between 2011 and 2012. Purposeful sampling was used to seek information-rich cases with informants not only living below the poverty line of US$10/day but also the nonworking poor and people living below the extreme poverty lines. Reports and poverty statistics from the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality Social Assistance Bureau were used to identify the low-income neighborhoods. To minimize selection biases and ensure a greater diversity in the informant pool (Denzin, 1978), fieldwork was conducted in six different settings, consisting of three neighborhoods in Izmir suburbs and three workplaces.

The inquiry underwent a continual inspection to grasp the effects of emerging variables on the topic of interest Wolcott (2001). Procedures of systematic coding were followed as suggested in previous studies (Carson et al., 2001; Kvale, 1996; Spiggle, 1994; Silverman, 2005). During the analysis and interpretations, special attention was given not to neglect the deviant cases and cover all the data so as to investigate the issue through a broad perspective.

The interviews were translated by two independent bilingual translators who compared their versions to ensure semantic equivalence and reach consensus on the translation of the ambiguous words. The researcher who conducted the interviews was also present during these discussions and added her comments when necessary. The categories, themes, and interpretations reached through the data analysis are presented in the following section.

Findings: Emergent culturally grounded themes

Due to income limitations, low-income consumers often cannot reach their desired objects, which results in disappointment and deepens undesired and disconcerting feelings. As the focal argument of our article, the expressed or discerned disenchantment was often not only limited to utilitarian shortcomings—such as not being able to fill the stomach—but also included felt social exclusion if a person could not afford a trendy product such as an iPhone.

Not being able to be a part of the consumer society has many consequences both at the individual and at the societal levels: It motivates low-income consumers to adopt different coping strategies. These include sacrificing material and nonmaterial assets such as their money (incurring debt), investments (foregoing saving), time (working overtime), and sometimes even their nutrition (foregoing eating or eating filling but low-nutrition food). Among our informants, one of the younger ones was skipping his lunch for the last three months to be able to save money for an iPhone. The key issue here is whether the BOP line should be set at the starvation point, or should capabilities be linked (as suggested often by economists) to the basic necessities such as food and shelter (Anand and Ravallion, 1993; Lewis and Ulph, 1988; Rowntree, 1901), or are broader conceptual constructs needed that blend resources, capabilities, relations, and desires.

From a consumer research perspective, adopting a bottom-up approach with the viewpoints of low-income consumers, sociocultural dimensions inevitably enter the discourse. Our findings show how a consumer—even if not at the starvation point—can belong to the BOP, experience immiseration, and feel socially excluded. While we endorse previous positions that defining the BOP only in absolute economic terms (in dollars) can be a mistake since living standards vary across countries (Sen, 1983, 1985, 1999), we would also like to move the discourse beyond the biogenic and stark utilitarian needs. We argue that capabilities in a broader sense—in terms of defining BOP—should incorporate some hedonic and psychogenic needs. While the definition of the BOP is relative to the context, culture, and time, our study situates BOP within the broader discourse on globalization. Creation and shaping of universal desires through mass communication, production, and consumption is happening near simultaneously in the contemporary connected world, thus linking BOP concepts and criteria to an evolving global consumer culture. Selected field study findings follow to shed light on these issues.

Basic necessities and beyond

As the low-income people have limited monetary resources at hand (usually minimum wage earned by one family member), by sheer necessity, they have to spend their money mostly on rent, food, utilities, and credit card payments, which often leave no disposable income for extras such as clothing or entertainment.

Kadri (Male, 30): I spend a majority of my income on rent. It is 500 TL (about 180 US$). We live in Balçova (a middle income neighborhood, which is close to his job). Electricity and water bills make 100 TL (about 35 US$). That amounts to 600 (about 215 US$)…Rent is really a big pressure on us. I spend nearly all the money I earn on rent. If I didn’t have to pay rent, I would have faced less difficulty in making a living. I could then spend money on other things easily. I can spend more on my child.

For low-income consumers, reaching the desired objects requires them to generate additional financial resources, as most of their income is committed to the basic necessities. If lucky, some may find extra jobs, working after the regular working hours. An easier way is to take credit from the banks, via readily available loans and credit cards. Working even harder to cover these expenses means making sacrifices from their time, straining their relationships, or, in some situations, even adversely affecting their physical and mental health as these financial burdens create emotional distress.

Rahmi (Male, 40): I get my salary and I give it totally to the banks. Credits…many people here are just like me, we are working for paying the credits we took. What can you do? You take credit, 5000-6000 TL (about 1800-2150 US$) and you cover the debts of the credit cards. Then you start paying both for the credit and for the usual expenses like food, etc. Then you start buying the things you desire with the credit card, again…I have 30,000 TL (about 10,800 US$) debt in total. I am getting closer and closer to my downfall. Each month, I use my whole salary to pay the debts. If you are not able to pay it, they start the legal process which means that your life is over! It is such a big burden on you, it creates distress…You know that one day you will be devastated financially, but you try to postpone it as much as you can. You don’t know at which point it will happen, so it creates a huge stress on you. I know that someday I will…anyway, I try not to think about it.

Unfortunately, the debt spiral is a common problem for the low-income consumers and most of them face this problem at some point in their lives (Hamilton, 2009).

Earning barely enough for their basic necessities, it may not be possible for them to afford paying back the accumulated debt. Considering the severity of the problem, with the prevailing financial system, lacking the required marketplace and financial literacy poses a big threat for the poor. Although they are aware of the risks of using credit cards or taking loans, at some point, they use such means for reaching the desired objects, which further worsens their situation. In the meanwhile, the desire does not stop at basic necessities:

Yavuz (Male, 48): Not being able to reach makes you sad, and you keep that in your mind all the time. We know that it will never happen. We have that idea in our mind, we say “it’s impossible” and we move on. I ask myself and feel sad, “Why didn’t I get an education?” We see things around us…I wish I was like him, I wish I had such nice clothes; I wish I was able to have a nice dinner out with my wife. You feel depressed. I look back into the past, but there is nothing I can do now. I try not to think about it much. It just comes to my mind and then goes. I took the university exams twice, but I could not pass. Then I did my military service and never tried again. I regret that.

Previous studies focus on the consequences of the consumer culture on low-income consumers whose resources limit them from an active participation in the mainstream society. Felt deprivation includes experiences and feelings such as separation and alienation from the mainstream (Alwitt, 1995), loss of control (Hill and Stephens, 1997), anger, feelings of incapability (Sen, 1992), learned helplessness (Rabow et al., 1983), escapist behaviors, emotional distress, addictive behaviors, and even severe mental illness (Hill, 1991); in other words, psychological and sociological issues that go beyond the line of starvation. Anybody who feels these kinds of deprivations and experiences hopelessness (due to income limitations) can belong to the BOP, although they earn above the poverty line set at US$2 a day. Many of these disenchanted states do not arise simply from the inability to fill the stomach; other factors are at play:

Hatice (Female, 25): Recently we went to Bornova. My husband and his friend gave me a ride when they were going to work. You may know it, there is a place called Küçükpark (a little neighborhood where there are many cafes often preferred by university students). I saw those people there…how they eat, how they drink, how they spend money…I stayed there for a moment, my eyes full of tears. “Our life is not a life” I said, “look at all these people.” We cannot know those lives since we are not living in it. If you don’t have such a life, you would never know. It’s weird for us. I feel bad whenever it comes to my mind. I told my husband “Look at these people, they have everything.” He said “We cannot do anything, they are like that, and we are like this.” I am not angry at my husband. But I am angry at them. I wish I was like them. I am a human too; I deserve a good life too. I want to hang around with my husband, sit in a café, and drink tea. We always go to parks. Kids are playing in the empty park and we stare at them…I wish we could sit in a nice café, drink some tea and talk with my husband…become one of those people…

Hatice avoids venturing out of her neighborhood, since the relatively affluent lifestyles she sees around in other parts of the city disturbs her. Direct and frequent exposure to such lifestyles and desire-inducing commodities makes harder for her to control her desires. Felt deprivation may damage poor people’s psychological states, the satisfaction they get from their lives, and also their self-esteem (Hill and Gaines, 2007; Sen, 1992). Hatice’s eyes were full of tears during the interview as she was talking about her experience. A desire to have a cup of tea in a nice café may seem simple, but it is an unreachable luxury for the poor. Given such feelings of deprivation and immiseration, how do we define the capabilities (a la Sen)? Having a cup of tea in a café is not a basic necessity for physical survival, but it seems to be one for sociocultural survival. As the set of capabilities are context dependent (Sen, 1985), drinking a cup of tea may be perceived as a basic necessity, and the deprivation felt in terms of not achieving this capability can be as severe as other forms of incapability.

Social exclusion

The desire for social conformity is among the most important social drives that direct our consumption toward certain commodities and brands, enabling us to look like others (e.g., Belk et al., 1982) and present ourselves in decent ways on the stage of life (Goffman, 1959/2002). From a sociocultural perspective, not having the capability to attain the desired trendy objects may lead to social exclusion:

Orhan (Male, 45): Clothing…I believe is the mirror for oneself. I prefer clothes of best quality. We don’t have a house, or a car. All we have is our clothes, at least let the clothes be as good as we are. You know the story…They ask you “Where did you steal these from?” if you look poor. If you look poor, you will be slandered. But if you look rich, even if you’ve really stolen something, you won’t be suspected…Why am I always talking about these clothes? I won’t give up buying clothes whether I have 1000 TL or 1 TL in my pocket because it is very important. You are exposed to a lot of bad behaviour if you look poor. But if you wear good clothes, they think that you have a good job, you’re a good person. They treat you in a completely different way. Even the policeman for example, if you look good, they address you as “Sir.” But if you look poor they bark at you: “Come here, tell me who you are, what you’re doing here, etc…” It’s all about the look. The society forces you to behave like this. Therefore, my only luxury expenditure is clothing.

According to Orhan, wearing nice clothes and looking good is directly related to the respect paid by others in society. In his experience, if one looks poor, he will be the “usual suspect.” Therefore, he has developed this strategy of spending his limited income on buying good, rich-looking clothes. Wearing good-looking, expensive, and branded clothing—as defined by the global consumer culture—becomes a necessity in contemporary society. The sign value of clothing gives a brand its meaning, and the “look” has become essential for social desirability (see, e.g., Baudrillard, 1969; Goldman and Papson, 1996):

Sabri (Male, 33): I buy them through my credit card. I try to buy the best as much as possible. For example, I buy my jeans usually from Mavi, my shoes from Adidas, t-shirts as well. Sometimes, I buy cheaper (non-branded) products as well. But there is such a big difference between them…The ones you buy from the stores look completely different; they look good on you. My friends in the neighbourhood are all buying their clothes from these stores. They pay a lot of attention to their clothing…If you want to hang around with them and not drink your tea alone in the coffee house, you better dress up nicely.

Furthermore, consumers buy and use products for emulation and with conspicuous motivations such as being able to say “I can afford it.” Some product categories that kept appearing often in our informants’ discourses—cars, cell phones, and jewellery—are mostly used in social domain rather than private domain; therefore, the motivation behind such consumption behavior is based upon the need for showing others that one has “achieved” the required capabilities. Consequently, these capabilities can be considered as basic capabilities to be achieved through commodities not only for the affluent members of the society but also for the poor.

The capability of achieving children’s desires

In addition to their own frustration of not being able to participate in the mainstream consumer society, low-income people feel even worse when they cannot make their children achieve their desires. The burden on poor families with respect to children is heavy and conflicting: On the one hand, meeting children’s basic needs and educating them are major expenses; on the other hand, the desire of children to consume trendy branded global products is also strong. In parallel with the findings of some previous studies (Hamilton, 2009), many of our informants declared that they sacrifice their own needs to ensure that their children fulfill their desires. In Fahriye’s case below, this sacrifice may go even one step further, sacrificing food:

Fahriye (Female, 28): I remember, one day we had just 16 TL (about 6 US$) in our hand. I asked my daughter to buy some food from Sevgi Yolu (a street in their neighbourhood where little stores are located). Pants with flower figures were popular those days among youth. She saw one of them in a store, and she bought it for 15 TL. She came back home with 1 TL and no food. I asked her “Where is the food?” My husband told me to calm down; he said that it is enough for him to see her child happy. But we had no food. We ate whatever we had at home. I baked the old pieces of bread first. I made a soup and put those breads into it. That was our dinner that night. I create things; you need to be creative if you lack things.

The desire does not stop at basic necessities. Perhaps due to her youthful age, Fahriye’s daughter preferred following her desires, ignoring the family’s more urgent needs. Older children may control such desires better; yet, desiring does not stop. The priority for the parents is their children’s desires and to shield them from the disappointments and bitter feelings of incapability that their parents have been facing lifelong. In most cases, however, parents do not succeed in this. Indeed, the feelings of “perceived incapability” and felt deprivation rise to the maximum level for the parents in case of failure in meeting the desires of their children:

Yusuf (Male, 56): It makes you feel so sad…I guess this feeling is more or less the same for everybody. Not being able to get what you want, or not being able to provide your son what he wants. Sometimes when I get my salary, we spend it on bank credit, on this and that so that I am left with 25 kuruş (quarter of 1 TL) in my pocket. He is young, he desires things. Lately he asked me to give him 20 TL; I had 5 in my pocket. To me, that’s shameful. Next day I came here and borrowed some money from my friends, so that I could give him that money. That’s really hard…it’s the hardest part of all. Is there anything worse than your incapability to provide your children what they want? As I said, we are trying to manage it somehow, even though it is extremely hard.

Yusuf characterized it as “the hardest part of all.” Taking into consideration all the difficulties he faces because of being poor, the felt deprivation reaches a zenith in the case of not attaining their children’s desires. Avoiding the feeling of shame becomes a basic capability to be achieved (Sen, 1985), but this time the shame is not associated only with the inability to satisfy the basic necessities of one’s family and children. The set of “basic necessities” to avoid shame has expanded in a world of global mediascapes. Due to the global consumer culture, not being able to buy a pair of Nike shoes for children has become a reason for the feelings of shame.

As discussed earlier, youth is often more prone to consuming branded products, seeking these commodities for self-verification and for conformity. Even if they cannot find the resources to attain the original ones, they try to cover this incapability through using fake products, which mimic the original ones. But some of these younger informants are afraid of the humiliation they may face if their friends discover that the product is fake:

Şeyma (Female, 32): I don’t want my child to be humiliated. But sometimes I just cannot afford it. They need a lot of things. For example, they don’t like the ordinary shoes; they want the branded ones, pants as well. Nowadays their focus is brands. First, I was saying that I would buy later. But then I started telling them that they shouldn’t push me that hard. I cannot afford. I can buy 3-4 pairs of non-branded shoes for that money. My daughter sometimes says that they make fun of her, saying that “Let me look, is it original?” She tells me that her peers are doing these kinds of things all the time. Making fun of them, calling them, saying “Look at those; they cannot afford even a pair of original shoes. Look these are fake…,” etc. They are kids; they do those kinds of things to each other. Recently there was a meeting in the school. The teacher told us to be careful about those things so that our children don’t fall into emulation. She told us that we shouldn’t buy a lot of things for them and trigger their desires for brands. We try to teach them these things, but eventually, the school is the place where they are exposed to the brands.

To protect their children from the consequences of humiliation (such as peer misbehavior), parents try hard to make sure that they can buy at least a few branded products for their children. Yet, this motivation increases the possibility of other children’s exposure to these branded products, which turns the situation into a vicious cycle, a “keeping up with the Joneses” process, even among the poor. As most of these families do not have enough resources for buying these very expensive branded products—a pair of Nike or Adidas shoes usually cost about 150 TL, about 55 US$—they rely on using credit cards for protecting their children from humiliation, enabling the children to have at least some of the emblems of global desire.

The capabilities to be achieved to have a “normal” life—according to the unwritten standards set by the contemporary mediatized, global consumer society—extend well beyond basic necessities and beyond just the need to avert the shame of not having minimum necessities. The socially defined ways of living a decent life sets the standards to a point where the capabilities mentioned by Sen—such as avoiding shame—transmogrify into the ability to consume according to the standards of the global consumer culture. Not only the people who fail in achieving basic necessities but also the ones who cannot provide either themselves or their children with the desire-inducing objects feel deprived: incapable, excluded, and poor.

Discussion and conclusions

Juxtaposing the received wisdom from the past studies on poverty and the findings of this study, we argue that a broader conceptualization of poverty—drawing some additional insights from marketing and consumer research studies—is crucial for improving our understanding of poverty and BOP issues. The debates on the definition of poverty will keep happening, both in terms of eliminating extreme poverty and in terms of providing decent standards of living. This study can contribute to the body of literature as well as advance the research agenda on BOP topics in three main aspects.

Redrawing the lines

The first aspect focuses on whether the BOP lines, which are frequently used in the current studies and in the efforts for poverty alleviation, should be set at the starvation point, or capabilities should be set to the basic necessities such as food and shelter (Atkinson, 1989; Anand and Ravallion, 1993; Lewis and Ulph, 1988; Rowntree, 1901; Ravallion, 1994, 2002), or should they be broadened. We of course still need standard definitions of poverty, including monetary ones using daily wage levels, for the purpose of speaking the same language both in the academic and in the practical domains. The problem, however, seems to be much broader than defined, as these poverty lines fail in explaining a minimally decent life in an adequate way. Defining poverty through stark and noncontext-dependent poverty lines is a limited perspective in the sense that they fail to provide us with satisfactory information about different levels of felt deprivation faced by the poor. Disregarding the real-life experiences and felt deprivations is an ontological and epistemic travesty—the ideas and views of those who are the research and policy targets are being ignored. Feelings such as alienation, loss of control (Alwitt, 1995; Hill and Stephens, 1997), anger, incapability (Sen, 1992), learned helplessness (Rabow et al., 1983), escapism, addiction, and even severe mental illness (Hill, 1991) clearly show that the problems associated with poverty are beyond what is narrowly described (malnutrition and lacking required education). This study emphasizes that the psychological and sociological problems associated with poverty may pose a greater threat for the well-being of a society in the long run, especially after extreme poverty has been eliminated. Consequently, we argue that anybody who feels the bitterness of lacking a minimally decent life can belong to the BOP, of course with the proviso that we do not everescalate the line to reflect the insatiability of consumer desire. This requires the research on poverty to be built on participatory and inclusive perspectives in order to understand the real-life experiences of the poor from their points of view and a way of sorting—again in a participatory and not in a top-down moralistic way—through the maze of felt deprivations.

Incorporating sociocultural dimensions

This study also pointed to the importance of the sociocultural dimensions in the definitions of poverty, rather than giving primacy to or putting sole emphasis on the economic dimension. We argue that it is not possible to reach a comprehensive understanding by considering merely the economic dimension of the issue (Laderchi et al., 2003) and disregarding the social and cultural effects, aspects that both help in defining “the culture of poverty” and the limits that should be set to understand who the poor are. Revealing the effects of the global consumer culture on the perceived deprivation of the poor, we propose these effects as building blocks of new dimensions to be included in the definitions of poverty.

Our findings show how a consumer can belong to the BOP and feel socially excluded without being at the starvation point. The fear of social exclusion and humiliation comes forth in our findings as a major motivation for consuming specific products such as cell phones and clothing and for the consumption of certain iconic branded products. The socially defined ways of living a decent life appear to be associated with the ability to consume according to the global consumer culture. Consequently, a person’s inability to achieve social acceptance (through commodities) can be regarded as a new, and relatively less discussed, dimension of poverty. The role of the societal forces, in particular, the sociocultural dynamics of the global consumer culture, is prominent in our findings. These forces act as a catalyst in the social exclusion process, as it deepens the contradiction between the real-life experiences and the idealized consumption-oriented lifestyles that global consumer culture promotes.

From invariance to contextual calibration

Finally, this research sheds light on a part of the discussions on whether reaching an absolute definition of poverty is possible or the definitions should be context and time specific. The debate on reaching a universal and absolute definition of poverty (in terms of attainment of minimal floor level of subsistence daily wage) is important due to the imperative of the universal humanistic goal of alleviating extreme poverty worldwide. In a world of eroding borders between cultures and practices, however, the definition of poverty becomes more complex than simple monetary wage rubrics. Defining “poverty” becomes harder without understanding the effects of globalization in terms of the life conditions of the poor and the effects of the consumer culture on their lives.

While the set of capabilities such as nutrition and shelter retain their core importance as absolute capabilities to be achieved, it is also important to explore categories of needs that extend beyond the biogenic needs. A certain calibrated level of an “extended set of needs,” recalibrated periodically according to geopolitical and national economic setting at hand, is necessary if poverty is to be countered in a humane way (the alternative of course being that of adopting the political position of “blaming the poor” for their “unwarranted and unreasonable” desires). Although we have argued that the definition of BOP is relative to the context, culture, and time, the effects of the global consumer culture creates universal desires for consuming the same iconic branded products for a decent life characterized by social acceptability and likability. Feeling oneself poor or socially excluded is no longer merely associated with the satisfaction of the basic necessities. The set of “basic necessities” to be reached in order to avoid social exclusion and shame (Sen, 1985) has expanded, and “blaming the poor” for this is far more unethical than (say) “blaming the greedy capitalists and brand marketers.” Indeed, the poor and the capitalist brand marketing methods are part of the same globalized culture. The capability set, as seen in this study from Turkey, has shifted to a level that includes buying and consuming trendy, fashionable, and even branded products. Consequently, one may argue that commodities to achieve certain capabilities (such as avoiding shame) could become absolute as well, thanks to the global consumer culture. This way of characterizing “poverty,” however, requires further investigation in different contexts.

The definition of BOP should also be time variant and temporally calibrated (much like the economic idea of “cost-of-living-adjustment” or COLA), as the variables to be included in the capability set also change over time. Indeed, one may also argue that with the passage of time, the capability set and the commodities to achieve these capabilities may become more absolute in some sense. Although not being able to buy branded products was not a major concern for the poor in the past decades (in a less intensely branded, sparsely global world), now it is an important capability to prevent exclusion. This also shows us the importance of the effects of consumer culture on the meaning of poverty and “being poor.”

As a summary, although the debate on whether the definition of poverty should be absolute or context specific may continue, it is clear that this definition should include the sociocultural dimension in order to reach a better conceptualization. Future studies should focus on broader dimensions of poverty that are neglected in the previous discussions, in particular, the effects of globalization and of global consumer culture. Previous studies mostly adopted a quantitative approach (Appleton and Booth, 2001); there has emerged, as a result, the need for in-depth studies to understand poverty from a sociocultural (and especially from an embedded and “felt”) perspective. Therefore, we suggest the addition of ethnographic and qualitative research methods to the toolkit of poverty and BOP-related research in the future, to achieve the required depth as well as broader perspectives. Finally, a bottom-up approach can be beneficial both in terms of reaching a better description of poverty and social exclusion and in terms of the effectiveness of the future policies, which could be based on these new descriptions.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

Ackerman

(1997) ‘Consumed in Theory: Alternative Perspectives on the Economics of Consumption’, Journal of Economic Issues 31(3): 651–64.

Agafonoff

(2006) ‘Adapting Ethnographic Research Methods to Ad Hoc Commercial Market Research’, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal 9(2): 115–25.

Alkire

(2005) ‘Why the Capability Approach?’, Journal of Human Development 6(1): 115–33.

Alkire

Foster

(2010) ‘Designing the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (HDI)’, URL (consulted January 2015): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1815248.

Alwitt

L.F.

(1995) ‘Marketing and the Poor’, American Behavioral Scientists 38(4): 564–77.

Anand

Ravallion

(1993) ‘Human Development in Poor Countries: On the Role of Private Incomes and Public Services’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 7(1): 133–50.

Appadurai

(1990) ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’, Theory, Culture and Society 7(2): 295–310.

Appleton

Booth

(2001) ‘Combining Participatory and Survey-based Approaches to Poverty Monitoring and Analysis’, in Background paper for Uganda Workshop 2001. URL (consulted May 2015): http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/2185.pdf.

Atkinson

A.B.

(1989) Poverty and Social Security. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

10.

Baker

Gentry

J.W.

Rittenburg

T.L.

(2005) ‘Building Understanding of the Domain of Consumer Vulnerability’, Journal of Macromarketing 25(2): 128–39.

11.

Barry

B.M.

(1998) Social Exclusion, Social Isolation and the Distribution of Income. URL (consulted May 2015): http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/6516/1/Social_Exclusion,_Social_Isolation_and_the_Distribution_of_Income.pdf.

12.

Baudrillard

(1969) ‘The Ideological Genesis of Needs’, in Schor

J.B.

Holdt

D.B.

(eds.) The Consumer Society Reader, pp. 57–80. New York: The New Press.

13.

Belk

R.W.

Bahn

K.D.

Mayer

R.N.

(1982) ‘Developmental Recognition of Consumption Symbolism’, Journal of Consumer Research 9(1): 4–17.

14.

Blocker

C.P.

Ruth

J.A.

Sridharanc

Beckwithd

Ekicie

Goudie-Huttonf

Rosag

J.A.

Saatciogluh

Talukdari

Trujilloj

Varman

(2013) ‘Understanding Poverty and Promoting Poverty Alleviation Through Transformative Consumer Research’, Journal of Business Research 66(8): 1195–202.

15.

Burroughs

J.E.

Rindfleisch

(2012) ‘What Welfare? On the Definition and Domain of Transformative Consumer Research and the Foundational Role of Materialism’, in Mick

D.G.

Pettigrew

Pechmann

Ozanne

J.L.

(eds.) Transformative Consumer Research for Personal and Collective Well-being, pp. 249–66. New York: Routledge.

16.

Carson

Gilmore

Perry

Gronhauget

(2001) Qualitative Marketing Research. London: Sage.

17.

Chakravarti

(2006) ‘Voices Unheard: The Psychology of Consumption in Poverty and Development’, Journal of Consumer Psychology 16(4): 363–76.

18.

Curtis

(2000) ‘Low income, Low Priority’, Marketing 26: 36–7.

19.

Deeming

Gubhaju

(2014) ‘The Mis-measurement of Extreme Global Poverty: A Case Study in the Pacific Islands’, Journal of Sociology 51(3): 689–706.

20.

Denzin

N.K.

(1978) The Research Act: A Theoretical Introduction to Sociological Methods. New York: McGraw-Hill.

21.

Duhachek

(2005) ‘Coping: A Multidimensional, Hierarchical Framework of Responses to Stressful Consumption Episodes’, Journal of Consumer Research 32(1): 41–53.

22.

Eckhardt

G.M.

Mahi

(2012) ‘Globalization, Consumer Tensions, and the Shaping of Consumer Culture in India’, Journal of Macromarketing 32(3): 280–94.

23.

Elliot

Leonard

(2004) ‘Peer Pressure and Poverty: Exploring Fashion Brands and Consumption Symbolism among Children of the “British Poor”’, Journal of Consumer Behavior 3(4): 347–59.

24.

Gasper

(1997) ‘Sen’s Capability Approach and Nussbaum’s Capabilities Ethic’, Journal of International Development 9(2): 281–302.

25.

Goffman

(1959/2002) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City: Anchor Books.

26.

Goldman

Papson

(1996) ‘Advertising in the Age of Accelerated Meaning’, in Schor

J.B.

Holt

D.B.

(eds) The Consumer Society Reader, pp. 81–99. New York: The New Press.

27.

Hamilton

(2009) ‘Those Left Behind: Inequality in Consumer Culture’, Irish Marketing Review 20(2): 40–54.

28.

Hamilton

Catteral

(2005) ‘Towards a Better Understanding of the Low Income Consumer’, Advances in Consumer Research 32(1): 627–32.

29.

Hamilton

Catteral

(2008) ‘I can Do it: Consumer Coping and Poverty’, in Lee

Soman

(eds) Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 35, pp. 551–56. Duluth: Association for Consumer Research.

30.

Hayakawa

Venieris

(1977) ‘Consumer Interdependence via Reference Groups’, Journal of Political Economy 85(3): 599–616.

31.

Henry

P.C.

(2005) ‘Social Class, Market Situation, and Consumers’ Metaphors of (Dis)empowerment’, Journal of Consumer Research 31(4): 766–78.

32.

Hill

R.P.

(1991) ‘Homeless Women, Special Possessions, and the Meaning of Home: An Ethnographic Case Study’, Journal of Consumer Research 18(3): 298–310.

33.

Hill

R.P.

(1995) ‘Researching Sensitive Topics in Marketing: The Special Case of Vulnerable Populations’, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 14(1): 143–8.

34.

Hill

R.P.

(2001) ‘Surviving in a Material World: Evidence from Ethnographic Consumer Research on People in Poverty’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 30(4): 364–91.

35.

Hill

R.P.

(2002) ‘Compassionate Love, Agape, and Altruism: A New Framework for Understanding and Supporting Impoverished Consumers’, Journal of Macromarketing 22(1): 19–31.

36.

Hill

R.P.

(2008) ‘Disadvantaged Consumers: An Ethical Approach to Consumption by the Poor’, Journal of Business Ethics 80(1): 77–83.

37.

Hill

R.P.

Gaines

(2007) ‘The Consumer Culture of Poverty: Behavioral Research Findings and Their Implications in an Ethnographic Context’, The Journal of American Culture 30(1): 81–95.

38.

Hill

R.P.

Stamey

(1990) ‘The Homeless in America: An Examination of Possessions and Consumption Behaviors’, Journal of Consumer Research 17(3): 303–21.

39.

Hill

R.P.

Stephens

D.L.

(1997) ‘Impoverished Consumers and Consumer Behavior: The Case of AFDC Mothers’, Journal of Macromarketing 17(2): 32–48.

40.

Hirschman

E.C.

(1986) ‘Humanistic Inquiry in Marketing Research: Philosophy, Method, and Criteria’, Journal of Marketing Research 23(3): 237–49.

41.

Karpatkin

R.H.

(1999) ‘Toward a Fair and Just Marketplace for All Consumers: The Responsibilities of Marketing Professionals’, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 18(1): 118–22.

42.

Kvale

(1996) Interviews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

43.

Laderchi

C.R.

Saith

Stewart

(2003) ‘Does it Matter that We Do Not Agree on the Definition of Poverty? A Comparison of Four Approaches’, Oxford Development Studies 31(3): 243–74.

44.

Lewis

G.W.

Ulph

D.T.

(1988) ‘Poverty, Inequality and Welfare’, The Economic Journal 98(390): 117–31.

45.

Martin

K.D.

Hill

R.P.

(2012) ‘Life Satisfaction, Self-determination, and Consumption Adequacy at the Bottom of the Pyramid’, Journal of Consumer Research 38(6): 1155–68.

46.

Ozanne

J.L.

Hill

R.P.

Wright

N.D.

(1998) ‘Juvenile Delinquents’ Use of Consumption as Cultural Resistance: Implications for Juvenile Reform Programs and Public Policy’, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 17(2): 185–96.

47.

Pew Research Center (2015) A Global Middle Class is More Promise than Reality, URL (consulted December 2015): http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2015/08/Global-Middle-Class-Report_8-12-15-final.pdf.

48.

Prahalad

C.K.

Hammond

(2002) ‘Serving the World’s Poor Profitably’, Harvard Business Review 80(9): 48–59.

49.

Rabow

Berkman

S.L.

Kessler

(1983) ‘The Culture of Poverty and Learned Helplessness: A Social Psychological Perspective’, Sociological Inquiry 53(4): 419–34.

50.

Ravallion

(1994) ‘Measuring Social Welfare with and Without Poverty Lines’, American Economic Review 84(2): 359–64.

51.

Ravallion

(2002) ‘How Not to Count the Poor? A Reply to Reddy and Pogge’, World Bank, working paper URL (January 2015): http://www.columbia.edu/∼sr793/wbreply.pdf.

52.

Room

G.J.

(1999) ‘Social Exclusion, Solidarity and the Challenge of Globalization’, International Journal of Social Welfare 8(3): 166–74.

53.

Rosenfeld

(2010) ‘The Meaning of Poverty and Contemporary Quantitative Poverty Research’, The British Journal of Sociology 61(s1): 103–10.

54.

Rowntree

B.S.

(1901) Poverty: A Study of Town Life. London: Macmillan.

55.

Sen

(1983) ‘Liberty and Social Choice’, Journal of Philosophy 80(1): 5–28.

56.

Sen

(1985) ‘A Sociological Approach to the Measurement of Poverty: A Reply to Professor Peter Townsend’, Oxford Economic Papers 37(4): 669–76.

57.

Sen

(1992) Inequality Reexamined. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

58.

Sen

(1999) Development as Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press.

59.

Silverman

(2005) Doing Qualitative Research (2nd ed.). London: Sage.

60.

Slater

(1997) Consumer Culture and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

61.

Spiggle

(1994) ‘Analysis and Interpretation of Qualitative Data in Consumer Research’, Journal of Consumer Research 21(3): 491–503.

62.

Townsend

(1979) Poverty in the United Kingdom: A Survey of Household Resources and Standards of Living. Berkeley: University of California Press.

63.

Townsend

(2002) ‘Poverty, Social Exclusion and Social Polarisation: The Need to Construct an International Welfare State’, in Townsend

Gordon

(eds) World Poverty: New Policies to Defeat an Old Enemy, pp. 3–24. Bristol: The Policy Press.

64.

UNDP Sustainable Development Goals Booklet 2015, URL (consulted December 2015): http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/corporate/brochure/SDGs_Booklet_Web_En.pdf.

65.

Üstüner

Holt

D.B.

(2007) ‘Dominated Consumer Acculturation: The Social Construction of Poor Migrant Women’s Consumer Identity Projects in a Turkish Squatter’, Journal of Consumer Research 34(1): 41–56.

66.

Varman

Skålén

Belk

R.W.

(2012) ‘Conflicts at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Neoliberal Governmentality, Poverty, and Profits’, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 31(1): 19–35.

67.

Viswanathan

Sridharan

(2012) ‘Product Development for the BOP: Insights on Concept and Product Development from University-based Student Projects in India’, Journal of Product Innovation Management 29(1): 51–68.

68.

Wolcott

H.F.

(2001) Writing Up Qualitative Research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.