The Low-Income Consumer: Adjusting the Balance of Exchange

Linda F. Alwitt and Thomas Donley′s excellent new book reinvigorates the discussion of the major issues in this critical domain and provides creative and novel insights for their resolution. Through careful and imaginative analysis of secondary data, the authors challenge many stereotypes of the poor and provide a solid basis for fresh thinking about how to rebalance the inequities they face in their marketplace encounters. Their solutions draw imaginatively on experiences throughout the developing and developed worlds. This is a book that should be read by all concerned with the marketplace and its effects on its most vulnerable participants. --Alan R. Andreasen, Professor of Marketing & Associate Dean, Georgetown University Product, price, promotion, and place: These are the four areas in which marketing influences consumers. The Low-Income Consumer points out that poor consumers are at a distinct disadvantage in each of these areas. This innovative new book documents the imbalance of the exchange process by describing the business practice of those who market to poor consumers. Issues related to basic necessities--food, housing, and transportation are addressed--as well as the consumption of "sin" products by poor consumers. The problems faced by marketers who target low-income people, including the conflict between sound marketing practices, and marginally ethical or unethical applications of those practices are also examined. Individual chapters are devoted to how the poor manage their finances, how they learn about products from marketers, and how price discrimination and limited accessibility of goods and services affect poor consumers. The final section of the book presents a revised model of marketing exchange with poor consumers, and offers specific directions for a way in which the balance of exchange between marketers and low-income consumers can be adjusted. The Low-Income Consumer is a helpful resource for scholars and researchers in marketing, economics, social work, public policy, consumer policy, and consumer psychology. The book is also appropriate for students in marketing management, business ethics, sociology of the poor, economics of poverty, and public policy.