Making your ends meet by helping consumers make their ends meet

Economist C.K. Prahalad, in his 2004 book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, identified ways marketers can tap into income streams by tailoring products, packaging and promotion to “the four billion people living on less than $2.00 a day.”

Prahalad urges us to take advantage of little insights about these consumers, such as:

• Smaller packages are more affordable
• Brands connections can still be strong, even at lower price points
• Today’s bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) consumers may become higher-margin prospects for up-market brands later on

I’m not suggesting everyone go after a slice of the BOP market. The bigger lesson I took from Prahalad’s book is that we sometimes hide opportunities behind our own bias. We are constantly chasing the fashionable and much-discussed value streams: Trading up, premium, green consumerism, marketing to millenials. So much so that we lose sight of gaps in the market.

Much of the value to be extracted from a gap in the marketplace has been siphoned away by the time stories about it start showing up in BusinessWeek and The Times.

We look for opportunities within opportunities. Want to discover value? Ask yourself the question: Is there a segment within the demographic or behavioral pie that we can slice off for ourselves?

For example, marketers are fond of tossing this one out at cocktail parties: “Did you know that Hispanics will be responsible for 10 cents of every dollar spent in the US in a few years?”

The New Food Marketer might smile, stifle a giggle and knowingly nod while thinking to herself, “Yes, but unlike you, I also know that the most profitable segment of that audience for my brand is conservative women who earn $75K+, with 2+ children and an SUV, and I plan to use that knowledge to crush my competitors.”

Go on now, don’t settle for being spoon-fed. Dig into that bowl of information and uncover something rich and tasty.