The Bop Consumer in a Neo-Liberal World
The Base-of-the-pyramid (BoP) strategy places the capitalist firm at the center of global poverty alleviation, allowing the firm to direct market processes that are intended to transform poor citizens of the world into entrepreneurs and consumers. Consumer researchers have overlooked the political and ideological implications of the BoP strategy. In this paper, we explore the political and ideological dimensions of the BoP strategy. Take a critical perspective of the neo-liberal agenda that underlie the BoP strategy, we conceptualize the strategy as an exercise in Foucauldian “governmentality”, whereby the BoP’s ideological and democratic pretensions trap consumers into participating in their own exploitation.
Citation:
Sammy Bonsu (2011) ,"The Bop Consumer in a Neo-Liberal World", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 25-26.
Authors
Sammy Bonsu, York University, Canada
Volume
E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9 | 2011
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