Expanding and Enriching Marketing (and Management) Research,Education,and Practice Through Subsistence Marketplaces

Exclusion of subsistence marketplaces means that marketing leaves out much of humanity. Inclusion through the stream of subsistence marketplaces has led to a unique bottom-up approach, demonstrating how traditional marketing is not bottom-up enough. As well, mutually enriching synergies between research, education, and practice have emerged. Lessons learned extend to inclusive marketing in general. Theoretical and substantive insights about consumers and marketplaces very different from those traditionally studied have been developed, enriching marketing theory and practice for all contexts and realizing its full potential in sustainable development.

The stream of subsistence marketplaces is grounded in almost three decades of work that has expanded ¹ marketing and business to the study of low-income consumers as well as entrepreneurs and marketplaces. This stream (Viswanathan and Rosa 2007) illustrates the foundational imperative to expand marketing to include subsistence, defined as chronic life circumstances of barely making ends meet in the broad range of low income, from extreme poverty to the cusp of low to lower-middle income. Distinct from approaches to understanding poverty that focus mainly on material constraints, the holistic approach of the subsistence marketplaces stream considers a range of associated characteristics, such as low literacy, and the cognitive, affective, and behavioral constraints that co-occur with these characteristics. Indeed, such expansion of the marketing discipline encompasses and enriches research, education, and practice. Experience in this stream has demonstrated the central importance of inclusion or expansion in general to the marketing discipline, as well as key elements that maximize the potential benefits that can ensue. This commentary provides an overview of subsistence marketplaces, followed by insights and lessons for inclusive or expansive marketing in general.

Overview of Subsistence Marketplaces

Adopting a unique bottom-up, micro-level starting point, the subsistence marketplaces stream has developed unique synergies between research, education, and commercial and social practice (Viswanathan 2013, 2016). Described as a symbiotic academic–social enterprise, this approach is distinct from action research due its distinct characteristics: sustained immersion and mutually enriching relationships among facets of research, education, and practice (Viswanathan et al. 2020). Furthermore, the bottom-up approach has led to micro-level insights on how consumers and entrepreneurs think, feel, cope, relate, and sustain as bases for product design and development, business models, and sustainable development (Viswanathan 2013, 2016; Viswanathan, Rosa, and Harris 2005).

The stream is motivated by how much of humanity is not researched in sustained ways, nor portrayed in marketing education or considered in marketing practice (Viswanathan and Rosa 2007). Moreover, the approach emphasizes studying such consumers and preexisting marketplaces in their own right, from the inside out, rather than as new markets or means to other ends. Those in the wide range of low income function as consumers daily and as micro-entrepreneurs or marketers as well and require dedicated study. The stream aims to expand the realm of marketing and management, thereby including a vast set of previously excluded consumers (and entrepreneurs). In turn, doing so enriches the marketing discipline as these subsistence consumers (and entrepreneurs) engage in marketing in distinctly different ways, and learning about and from them enhances all the facets of the discipline.

Given the confluence of uncertainties that characterize such marketplaces, the distinctiveness of each context, and the confluence of unfamiliarities among marketing stakeholders from the outside, a bottom-up approach is essential and has evolved. The micro-level starting point of individuals, households, consumers, and entrepreneurs, in turn, is aggregated upward to the meso level of markets and products, and to the macro level of business models and sustainable development. Thus, the approach is also expansive across levels of analysis, whereas marketing knowledge is often compartmentalized by unit of analysis. It has also expanded education in marketing and management, demonstrating that exposure is education, as evidenced by the vast content and the large scale of students and educators that this stream has reached (Viswanathan 2016; http://www.subsistencemarktetplaces.org). Thus, the expansion of marketing education to include subsistence marketplaces through immersion, in turn, leads to the design of marketing solutions for and from such challenging contexts. In this sense, expansion or inclusion per se can lead to innovation. Finally, marketplace (marketing) literacy was envisioned, and pioneered in parallel, to reach low-income communities in large scale (Viswanathan, Gajendiran, and Venkatesan 2008; Viswanathan et al. 2021; http://www.marketplaceliteracy.org). Such literacy is unique in emphasizing the critical knowledge and skills relating to know-why, or deeper understanding of both consumer and entrepreneur, buyer and seller, and the broader marketplace. Also distinctive is the bottom-up approach to education adopted here.

Insights from Expansive Marketing in Subsistence Marketplaces

Subsistence marketplaces range in geography from urban to semi-urban, semi-rural, rural, deep rural, and even remote tribal settings, including refugee settlements and places of large-scale conflict. They are typified by lack of infrastructure and institutional mechanisms to varying degrees, and by lack of physical, digital, and informational access. Each context of subsistence is distinctive, as cultural and geographic differences pervade. This is in contrast to the relative similarity brought about to large degree by access to similar informational sources, infrastructure, and institutional mechanisms in resource-rich settings. Central to understanding subsistence marketplaces is recognizing the confluence of uncertainties in day-to-day life, whether in meeting basic essential needs, being subject to environmental disasters, or lacking infrastructure. On a typical day, those in relatively resource-rich contexts can rely on relative certainties in such arenas as transportation, communication, and food. In contrast, uncertainty pervades many realms of day-to-day life in subsistence contexts, be it about one’s next income or the availability of staples, cooking fuel and so forth. Broader uncertainties such as uninhabitable temperatures and other outcomes of climate change and environmental crises are central as well. Also pervasive is the lack of margin of error in daily life. Whereas a cushion or alternatives, such as different modes of communication, are typically available when something fails in relatively resource-rich settings, such redundancy is a luxury in subsistence contexts. In parallel, and stemming from exclusion from research, education, and practice, is a confluence of unfamiliarities among marketing managers, marketing researchers, businesses, academicians, policymakers, development professionals, and social entrepreneurs.

This stream of work has unpacked the understanding of poverty beyond being materially poor to being constrained in thinking, feeling, and coping (Viswanathan, Rosa, and Harris 2005). Difficulties in abstract thinking can lead to a tendency toward concrete thinking, which manifests in a variety of ways, such as reducing purchase decisions to one or very few variables (e.g., buying the cheapest alternative). For people lacking literacy, dependence on the sensory modes leads to pictographic thinking, a qualitatively different way of thinking that manifests in visualizing purchase quantities or counting by picturing currency bills. Constraints in feelings relate to anxiety and lack of self-confidence in mundane shopping tasks. Coping can include avoidance of situations or places, rather than being confrontational, and reliance on alternatives to buying, such as making or forgoing (Viswanathan et al. 2009). Although facing material deprivation and constraints in thinking, feeling, and coping, individuals living in subsistence marketplaces can be relationally or socially rich, although such richness can be double-edged. Subsistence consumers live in close proximity to their environment, subject to outcomes of climate change and other environmental problems. This stream emphasizes what individuals living in subsistence marketplaces try to sustain, bottom-up, offering a counter perspective to the prevalent top-down definitions of sustainability. Individuals survive, relate to others and the environment, and perhaps grow or help the next generation grow.

Individuals often play dual roles of consumer and entrepreneur (or marketer) (Viswanathan, Rosa, and Ruth 2010), the latter borne out of the necessity to find means of livelihood to meet basic consumption needs. In a sense, these marketers are means entrepreneurs, who find innovative ways to achieve ends, rather than create new-to-the-world products. Such entrepreneurs work in one-on-one interactional settings, which pose unique challenges: Exchanges are responsive and fluid, with constant demand for customization; relationships among small buyers and sellers can be enduring and imbued with interactional empathy; and the larger context is one of pervasive interdependence and oral communications (Viswanathan et al. 2012).

A number of qualitative and quantitative approaches have been developed to gain insights, with particular emphasis on immersion, which translates sympathy to informed empathy. A variety of content has been produced, including poverty simulations, recorded and virtual interviews and observations, 360-degree and day-in-the-life videos, and image-based immersion exercises (see https://www.subsistencemarketplaces.org). A process of bottom-up immersion, emersion, design, innovation, and enterprise has been developed (Viswanathan 2016; Viswanathan and Sridharan 2012). Bottom-up design is distinct from design thinking and involves focusing not just on the consumer but on the community and the larger context, taking a bottom-up approach even in unpacking the needs and in generating ideas for solutions, rather than imposing preconceived notions top-down.

Bottom-up marketing addresses how marketers and organizations can scale and grow from the bottom up (Viswanathan et al. 2024). A convergent vision across contexts can be balanced with divergent purposes aligned with specific contexts. Convergent, organic growth can be balanced with grounded diffusion that is divergent across contexts. Bottom-up marketing calls for shifts in mindset: to embrace rather than avoid unfamiliarity, explore rather than exploit, coevolve going beyond collaborating, and take perspective rather than narrow prematurely. Technological solutions should be easy to show, use, and connect while serving needs. A sustainable market orientation goes beyond “doing good and doing well” to encompass the notion that doing good relevant to the product offering is essential to doing well (Viswanathan et al. 2009). A unique characteristic of this stream of work is the symbiosis between research and social enterprise, such as in providing marketplace literacy for subsistence consumers and entrepreneurs (Viswanathan et al. 2020).

Emerging intuitively in parallel to research in this stream is the notion of marketplace (marketing) literacy, that is, the knowledge and skills that engender know-why or deeper understanding among consumers (and entrepreneurs) in the marketplace (Viswanathan, Gajendiran, and Venkatesan 2008). Indeed, marketing is the first layer of the onion that represents the skills and knowledge individuals need to function in the marketplace. Field experiments have demonstrated how marketplace literacy leads to higher personal well-being, better consumer decision-making, and higher consumer confidence (Viswanathan et al. 2021), with the advantages accentuated for those with less access. Both the content and the delivery of marketplace literacy education have emphasized concretization, localization, and socialization to be inclusive and expansive in engendering learning.

In terms of what marketing can be, subsistence marketplaces expand marketing beyond needs and wants to encompass life and brand aspirations (Viswanathan 2013, 2016). Product design for such radically different and challenging contexts can translate to higher-income markets as well, particularly in emergent arenas characterized by uncertainties and unfamiliarities, such as sustainability. Marketplace (marketing) literacy is critically important for much of humanity. Marketing can be a central discipline in sustainable development, given that understanding customers or beneficiaries is literally the exclusive domain of marketing. And the symbiotic academic–social enterprise reflects the bottom-up approach to learning, in capturing the relationship between research and practice, and marketing education as well (Viswanathan et al. 2020).

Lessons for Expansive or Inclusive Marketing

A number of lessons for expansive or inclusive marketing are noteworthy. First, a bottom-up approach to all facets from research to the design of marketing is critically important when addressing previously neglected or excluded contexts, due to the unfamiliarity involved. Second, this approach addresses all facets of the marketing endeavor from research to education and practice, the latter both commercial and social. Thus, inclusion or expansion is followed through to full potential, reflecting the importance of this field of study. Third, central here is how inclusion and expansion enrich marketing by moving it to new realms. This is more than semantics; it speaks to the immense value created by inclusion or expansion in challenging and enriching marketing knowledge.

In the quest for inclusion, being customer-driven in the traditional marketing sense is not bottom-up enough. Our emphasis on bottom-up marketing begins at the micro level of challenges in daily lives, incorporating individual, social, cultural, and institutional factors that span meso and macro levels. Inclusion begins with being bottom-up, whether in subsistence marketplaces for different groups of people or in different arenas such as health and education. Bottom-up immersion takes the vantage point of the excluded and provides the foundation for inclusion. A mindset of mutually enriching pathways between research, education, and practice pushes the boundaries of what inclusive research can catalyze.

The subsistence marketplaces stream has demonstrated how expansion and inclusion are central to all aspects of marketing, from developing understanding to designing marketing solutions and contributing through the discipline to sustainable development, as well as through implications for education, policy, and commercial and social practice. Indeed, the alternative—to engage in marketing while excluding much of humanity—is a nonstarter. Furthermore, the stream demonstrates how such expansion in turn benefits all consumers. Developing insights and designing marketing solutions in the most challenging of settings enables progress at all socioeconomic levels. If the disciplinary focus of marketing is on exchanges, then exchanges need to be studied in all their manifestations. “Exposure is education” is the guiding principle of curricular innovations that have emerged. Indeed, such expansion can be the basis for marketing innovation. Fundamental to the stream is the centrality of grounding through a bottom-up approach, a broader lesson given researchers’, educators’, practitioners’, and policymakers’ likely unfamiliarity with excluded contexts. Thus, reality from the ground up tempers preconceptions, top-down narratives, and purely ideological perspectives. Such expansion is also a catalyst for addressing issues, such as marketplace access in rural or remote tribal settings, digital literacy, infrastructure and institutional mechanisms, and, broadly, social and environmental sustainability.

The subsistence marketplaces stream has expanded the gamut of marketing from gaining understanding to designing solutions and envisioning what the marketing discipline can be. This expansion shows that marketing, although unique in business on its focus on customers, needs to be more bottom-up. Such insights have come about first and foremost because of being expansive and inclusive in the most challenging settings, studying exchanges—the disciplinary focus of marketing—in their own right. Indeed, the expansive journey of this stream demonstrates how marketing, broadly construed through inclusion and expansion with a bottom-up orientation, has the potential to be a catalyst as a discipline, function, and orientation, central to sustainable development. Expanding marketing to subsistence marketplaces highlights the imperative for researchers, educators, and practitioners alike to be bottom-up to engender inclusion in its fullest sense. Bottom-up understanding in turn enables unpacking of needs, problems, and challenges, potentially leading to enriched theoretical development for researchers, exposure as the underpinning of learning for educators, and bottom-up design of solutions and their implementation for policymakers and practitioners.

In conclusion, this article highlights the realm of subsistence marketplaces and the inclusive bottom-up approach to this area of study in its own right. A variety of stakeholders in marketing, such as funders and professional associations, can incorporate these aspects in their guidelines, through support of research, education, and practice.