Marketplace Behavior Across Literacy and Resource Barriers

2001 Presidential Address: Academy of
Management Review – Andrew Van De Ven

“I am surprised we pay so little attention to these tremendous disparities (in literacy and income) in the world, particularly since we espouse an international or global perspective”…“..greatest opportunity for our global economy – is to reach out and learn about the management and institutional forces that perpetuate and might ameliorate these disparities among countries..” …“It is time to spend our sabbaticals studying management practices and problems in one of these countries where 85% of the world’s organizations exist.”…“But let’s not go there as the economists did – spreading their theories … let us go there as scholars and students eager to be mentored”

Are current models of literate buyer and seller behavior in advanced economies sufficient to explain marketplace behavior across literacy and resource barriers? This research program addresses a large gap in the business and psychology literature, which has predominantly focused on literate marketplaces in advanced economies. A qualitative study of low-literate consumers in the US uncovered cognitive predilections, decision-making heuristics, and coping strategies that are fundamentally different from those of literate consumers. These findings suggest the need to modify existing theories or create new theories to account for phenomenon such as decision-making for lower levels of literacy. For example, low levels of literacy and cognitive constraints may suggest the model of a “cognitive survivor” rather than a cognitive miser.

This work has since expanded to low-literate, poor buyer and seller behavior and marketplaces in developing economies, thus examining the interplay between cognitive and economic constraints in marketplaces. These subsistence marketplaces represent a large proportion of the world’s population, yet have rarely been researched.

Summary of Findings in the US (powerpoint) – Journal of Marketing, January, 2005

Summary of Findings in India (powerpoint under preparation)

Book - Enabling Consumer and Entrepreneurial Literacy in Subsistence Marketplaces: Research-based Education Across Literacy and Resource Barriers, with S. Gajendiran and R. Venkatesan, Springer, 2007

Article in Business Perspectives, College of Business, University of Illinois

Article in online web news site, Chennai, India

Oped article in the News Gazette, Champaign, Illinois

Article in Inside Illinois, University of Illinois

Article in Association for Consumer Research Website