Who could have thought that the average Jill and James, at the bottom of the pyramid, would be somehow be the hope to a nation’s economic plague? But this is the case, according to the Food for Thought discussion forum that I attended last Tuesday. The presenter said if we start to acknowledge that the poor people are central to building up our economy, Zimbabwe could be well up on its economic feet in no time at all. What we have to do is try to get the vast majority buying goods at a very, very low cost. By so doing one can build a market that caters for people that would still buy bread at ten cents instead of a dollar. And you will make more money than the person selling bread for a dollar. The essence of his presentation was that goods that are normally very expensive are meant to be bought by the few at the top of the pyramid. If those same goods were available to some of us at the bottom, we would feel a sense of belonging, and thus trust and a relationship are built between the retailer and the customer. This in turn becomes the chance for a businessman to make billions at the bottom of the pyramid. However he did talk about the disadvantages of this business move. It means that the common person is often exposed to substandard goods.

This entry was posted on August 31st, 2009 at 8:53 am by Zanele Manhenga and is filed under Economy, Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.