The article in the url below demonstrates how Cadbury’s is trying to expand its hold on the confectionary market in India into the consumer base at the bottom of the pyramid:
“The candy maker's latest product for the low end of the Indian market is Cadbury Dairy Milk Shots. The pea-sized chocolate balls, which were introduced this year, are sold for just two rupees, or about four U.S. cents, for a packet of two, which weighs five grams -- a fraction of an ounce. They have a sugar shell to protect them from the heat.”
The potential for growth is significant:
“The British candy maker has been in India for more than 60 years and dominates the chocolate market. Still, it says, less than half of India's 1.1 billion people have ever tasted chocolate. Traditional milk-based sweets, or mithai, still dominate the industry here, where they are given and eaten at festivals.”
Although Prahalad’s bottom-of-the-pyramid argument has been seized by CSR advocates as a potential hope for solving some of the developing world’s social problems (and the article dutifully notes similar product downsizing by consumer products firms such as Procter & Gamble and Unilever), given some of the more fundamental problems that face the poorer sections of India’s society, it is hard to see how bringing chocolate to the masses constitutes social progress. The principle, however, is important—the greater the opportunities the private sector sees to cater to the needs of market segments in developing economies, the greater the chance for the progress that the private sector has brought elsewhere (the importance of chocolate notwithstanding J).
Take care
David
Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
Cadbury Redefines Cheap Luxury --- Marketing to India's Poor, Candy Maker Sells Small Bites for Pennies
By Sonya Misquitta
826 words
8 June 2009
B4
