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Social Class and BOP Marketing Consumer behavior is influenced by internal and external factors. One external factor that sets real boundaries for consumers is their level of income which determines their social class. Some marketers refer to strategies directed at different income tiers as targeting certain levels of a pyramid. Marketing to the “bottom of the pyramid,” focusing on consumers with very limited financial means, became well-known in 2004 when C. K. Prahalad wrote the book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. He envisioned companies marketing affordable products to the billions of consumers around the world with limited income and unmet needs. He believed that companies could help consumers and be profitable at the same time. India has been a major target for BOP marketers. Unilever, maker of Dove soap, has been one of the leaders in BOP marketing in India. It sold the company’s Wheel detergent as a “sachet”—a single-use package offered at a low price and packaged in a way that was consistent with the shopping habits of Indian consumers who often shop daily for necessities. To spread the word about Wheel, Unilever used an unorthodox sales force: 70,000 Shakti women to go into 165,000 rural villages to sell the product. Another Unilever program sold small sizes of its Lifebuoy soap and involved educating 300 million consumers about the health benefits of washing hands. One of Unilever’s chief rivals, P&G, took notice of Unilever’s success in India and worked to find ways to capture market share in a category in which they were the global market leader: razors and blades. They felt that there was a significant opportunity to meet the shaving needs of Indian men at the bottom of the pyramid. Unfortunately, early efforts, like its Vector razor, were undermined by a misunderstanding of the shaving process for men in India, many of whom did not have access to running water. More recently, P&G introduced the Gillette Guard. This razor was developed based on 3,000 hours of research over 18 months, some of it conducted in the homes of low-income Indian men. They asked the men about their shaving rituals and observed them in the process of shaving. What P&G found is that they typically shave sitting on the floors of their huts with no electricity, using a bowl of water and no mirror. Their primary objective is to avoid cutting themselves. This research proved to be invaluable in the development of a new razor. As a result of its painstaking research and attention to the needs of this unique target audience, P&G’s market share of razors and blades has grown significantly in India and at a faster rate than any other P&G brand in India. Despite the challenges they encountered, it appears that the Gillette Guard can be considered a bottom of the pyramid success story. Considering the worldwide need and opportunity for low cost products, companies will likely continue to pursue innovative strategies to reach consumers at the bottom of the pyramid.

Question: To serve BOP consumers profitably, companies have to assess their needs, modes of usage and provide cost effective innovative solutions. Discuss this statement in the context of this case.