Sources entrusted by the economically poor: Evidences from India, the largest poor consumer base in the world

Abstract

With a market value of US$570.1 billion, fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) industry is propounded to be the world's fourth largest industry and a very significant part of its rank comes from the consumptions made by the poor. The poor, by necessity, spend a substantial part of their income on FMCGs and their population is a better half of the world's population. It evokes the poor as a significant market for the FMCGs but still the purchase behaviour of the poor for FMCGs still stands at a very nascent stage, especially in developing countries' context. Present research bridges the gap on one of the largely untouched but a very important aspect of consumer behaviour of the poor. Specifically, it evaluates sources of product information entrusted by the poor for their FMCGs purchases in the context of India, a developing country domiciling the world's largest part of poor inhabitants. It interviews 360 poor (below poverty line) families of Delhi, India through multi-stage cluster sampling and reveals that the poor in Delhi, India entrusts TV and their families as the main marketer dominated and non-marketer dominated sources for their FMCG purchases respectively.