This volume provides a more detailed and profound understanding of an important and, until recently ignored, global phenomenon ??? marketplaces where individuals living in poverty buy/sell products and services. It is estimated that as many as 4 billion people with buying power exceeding $14 trillion fall into this market segment. Historically, the research in this area was conducted among consumers from industrialized economies. This research is rooted in fundamental assumptions about literacy and numeracy skills, life stability, cognitive predilections, and consumer access to basic resources such as education, water, and sanitation that often do not hold for poverty-stricken marketplaces.
This volume presents a collection of articles that describe this particular group of consumers and entrepreneurs, and inform us on better ways to understand, reach, and empower them. The potential to do well by ???doing good??? in these impoverished marketplaces is very high, it is the hope of the editors that this reference will jumpstart the development of new theories, frameworks, and models that address both consumption and entrepreneurship in this particular market.
*This series publishes conceptual and empirical papers that deal with international topics from all areas within the management field
*The organizations studied can be domestic or multinational, and the level of analysis can be macro or micro
*Through new theoretical insights, managerial application, methodology, or data, the papers make a significant contribution to advancing knowledge about international management

This book describes research on low-literate, poor buyers and sellers in subsistence marketplaces, the consequent development of an innovative marketplace literacy educational program that enables consumer and entrepreneurial literacy, and implications of the research and the educational program for business, education, and a variety of disciplines and functions. There are two important resources that individuals living in subsistence need to function in the economic realm: finances and know-how. The book describes an educational program that focuses on enabling generic skills about the marketplace. This program uses the know-why or an understanding of marketplaces as a basis for the know-how of being an informed buyer or seller. This volume discusses implications of the research and the educational program for non-profit organizations, for research and practice in education, for business research and practice, and for academic and applied research.

In a groundbreaking text that will inspire literacy educators, the authors here describe research on low-literate, poor buyers and sellers in subsistence marketplaces. They examine the consequent development of an innovative marketplace literacy educational program that enables consumer and entrepreneurial literacy. Then, they look at the implications of the research and the educational program for business, education, and a variety of disciplines and functions.