Conducting industry-changing research is costly, difficult and time consuming. It requires help – lots of help – from partners in industry and academia. But when the work has the potential to have a positive impact on millions of people living in some of the worst conditions around the world, it can be a very rewarding endeavor.
Two UNC Kenan-Flagler professors are now seeing some of those rewards from their research published in the article “Consumer behavior change at the base of the pyramid: Bridging the gap between for-profit and social responsibility strategies.”
Lisa Jones Christensen and Sridhar Balasubramanian compared the effectiveness of philanthropic and for-profit business models serving some of the poorest consumers in the world in a longitudinal field study with Enno Siemsen, a professor at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.
Working in partnership with Procter & Gamble, the two PhD’s analyzed differences in the uptake and usage of PUR water purification packets offered at different prices – moderate discount, deep discount and free – in three geographically separated but otherwise similar “base of the pyramid” (BoP) communities in Malawi in southeastern Africa.
Their findings from the field experiment yielded deep insights. They found that for-profit business models can be used to help the income-poor in developing countries, and that free giveaways are not always the best strategy.
To read more, click here for the story from the 2015 ROI Research Magazine.
Published January 5, 2015.