Ever since the start of 2SCALE late 2012, the program has committed to improve the access to nutritious food for consumers at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP). This has not always been an easy journey. The market potential is huge: some reports claim the total market value for food at the BoP in Sub-Sahara Africa to be around $215 billion. However, it is sometimes difficult for companies (especially SMEs) and farmer organizations to see that “abstract” potential and to invest in a different marketing strategy that will be needed to reach this consumer group as compared to consumer segments in the middle and higher classes.
May 10, 2019
Join our journey to reach the BoP
Nevertheless, over the years 2SCALE developed research methodologies to get more insight into BoP consumer behaviour on food consumption in the different countries of 2SCALE and used these insights together with a number of business champions in 2SCALE to create new product propositions, organize market activations at the BoP, or design last-mile distribution models from scratch.
All these efforts led to 37 new product propositions to be introduced in BoP markets by 24 different business champions. In total, over a million of these new products were sold, often within a short pilot time span, substantially increasing the turnover of the business champions. Close to 250,000 BoP consumers were reached through different market activations and communication campaigns. Also, business champions directly created over 200 new jobs through BoP marketing and distribution activities, for instance as sales agents, micro-distributors and marketeers.
Along the way, we learned a lot, created different approaches and methodologies, and tackled many different hurdles, and also sometimes we didn’t manage to! To share our experiences, we develop a new edition of the series of thematic papers that was started 2 years ago as a way of sharing 2SCALE insights with everybody interested in our work. You can download a copy of the thematic paper on BoP marketing and distribution
