Innovation and Project Management
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"Bottom of the Pyramid" Market
Project type
Innovation for the "Bottom of the Pyramid" Market
Year(s)
2020
Location
Peru
Role
Project Member
I was part of the project's core team that had the responsibility of designing and executing the user research, ideation sessions, and prototype development and testing.
Furthermore, I was responsible for crafting the reports for senior stakeholders and for assessing the financial viability of the prototypes.
Key Learning
While developing prototypes evaluate your internal capabilities and define if you can develop them all by yourself or not within the time and resources constraints of the project. Sometimes it is easier (and faster) to support the development of your prototypes and testing experiments with the aid of external partners.
Yes, it could cost more, but remember that you won't be using internal resources and you will have access to capabilities that your business doesn't have at that moment. Search and build a robust network of partners that will help you to accelerate your projects.
This 11-month project was focused in understanding the needs of consumers with lower incomes ("BOP - Bottom of the Pyramid") to strengthen the company's innovation portafolio towards this market segment. The project's challenge was defined as: how might we deepen our knowledge of the “bottom of the pyramid” consumers to help us generate a more user-centric strategy within the business?
The BOP market shows different realities and needs in comparison to middle and top tier segments which impact considerably in their buying decisions of food, personal care and home care products.
The research stage was focused in gathering information that would help to answer broad questions such as: what are their main motivations? where do they shop? how do they shop? why do they buy certain things/brands? what are they looking for in terms of products characteristics and formats? what type and style of communication resonates more with them?
Ten families from around the country participated in the research stage, that was made 100% virtual due to Covid-19 pandemic, which included interviews, purchasing missions, and in-home tasks. After the field work activity, the project team focused in analysing the data and crafting the conclusions and insights.
Following the research stage, several ideation sessions were performed using a divergence-convergence approach to select the concepts that were more suitable for user testing.
Two prototypes were developed and tested in real BOP environments throughout a two week period to assess their desirability, feasibility and viability. One prototype was a "mobile shop" and the other one a "sales representative scheme".
The project's findings and learnings were included in the strategic planning of the marketing team.
