Inclusive Marketing: Fostering Sustainable Wellbeing in Subsistence Communities

While marketers have been immensely successful in catering to the needs of consumers in contexts of affluence, the ultimate challenge confronting marketers is to cater to the underserved needs of low-income consumers around the globe. Ensuring that individuals from low-income contexts have access to quality products and services that can improve their welfare is the greatest opportunity of inclusive marketing. If we do not take inclusive marketing seriously, we run the risk of sustaining unjust societal inequities, or worse, we become complicit in accentuating them. In this chapter, we propose ideas to create an inclusive marketing mindset that address unserved needs (a) by creating new marketplace exchanges where none existed or (b) by supplanting a less optimal marketplace exchange with one that balances the process of creating social, environmental, and economic value. To do so, we highlight 8 mistakes commonly made by marketers who seek to improve the well-being among low-income communities in a sustainable manner. With examples and reflections on our research and practice, we propose ideas for what an inclusive marketer can do to avoid these mistakes. We also propose ways to make marketing practices inclusive and sustainable in addressing underserved needs in various low resource contexts.