In his landmark book, business scholar C. K Prahalad details the business opportunities that exist for firms that are creative and resourceful enough to develop markets among the world’s poorest people.” Done correctly, marketing to the 4 billion people at the base of the global economic pyramid would employ market forces in addressing some of the greatest ethical and environmental problems of the 21st century Obviously, helping meet the needs of the world’s poorest people would be a significant ethical contribution. The strategy involves another ethical consideration as well: A market of this size requires environmentally sustainable products and technologies. If everyone in the world used resources and created wastes at the rate Americans do, the global environment would suffer immeasurably. Businesses that understand this fact face a huge marketing opportunity Accomplishing such goals will require a significant revision to the standard marketing paradigm. Business must, in Prahalad’s phrase “create the capacity to consume among the world’s poor. Creating this capacity to consume among the world’s poor would create a significant win-win opportunity from both a financial and an ethical perspective. Prahalad points out that the world’s poor do have significant purchasing power. albeit in the aggregate rather than on a per capita basis. Creating the capacity to consume among the world’s poor will require a transformation in the conceptual framework of global marketing and some creative steps from business. Prahalad mentions three principles as key to marketing to the poor affordability, access, and availability. Consider how a firm might market such household products as laundry soap differently in India than in the United States. Marketing in the United States can involve large plastic containers, sold at a low per-unit cost. Trucks transport cases from manufacturing plants to wholesale warehouses to giant big-box retailers where they can sit in inventory until purchase. Consumers wheel the heavy containers out to their cars in shopping carts and store them at home in the laundry room. The aggregate soap market in India could be greater than the market in the United States, but Indian consumers would require smaller and more affordable containers. Prahalad therefore talks about the need for single-size servings for many consumer products. Given longer and more erratic work hours and a lack of personal transportation, the poor often lack access to markets. Creative marketing would need to find ways to provide easier access to their products. Longer store hours and wider and more convenient distribution channels could reach consumers otherwise left out of the market. So, too, can imaginative financing, credit, and pricing schemes. Microfinance and microcredit arrangements are developing throughout less-developed economies as creative means to support the capacity of poor people to buy and sell goods and services. Finally, innovative marketing can ensure that products are available where and when the world’s poor need them. Base-of-the-pyramid consumers tend to be cash customers with incomes that are unpredictable. A distributional system that ensures product availability at the time and place when customers are ready and able to make the purchase can help create the capacity to consume. Prahalad’s approach-tied to moral imagination discussed previously-responds both to