Browsing by Author "Sridharan, S."

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    Improving community health through marketing exchanges: a participatory action research study on water, sanitation, and hygiene in three Melanesian countries
    (Elsevier, 2016-11-02) Barrington, Dani J.; Sridharan, S.; Saunders, S. G.; Souter, Regina T.; Bartram, J.; Shields, K. F.; Meo, S.; Kearton, A.; Hughes, R. K.
    Diseases related to poor water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) are major causes of mortality and morbidity. While pursuing marketing approaches to WaSH to improve health outcomes is often narrowly associated with monetary exchange, marketing theory recognises four broad marketing exchange archetypes: market-based, non-market-based, command-based and culturally determined. This diversity reflects the need for parameters broader than monetary exchange when improving WaSH. This study applied a participatory action research process to investigate how impoverished communities in Melanesian urban and peri-urban informal settlements attempt to meet their WaSH needs through marketing exchange. Exchanges of all four archetypes were present, often in combination. Motivations for participating in the marketing exchanges were based on social relationships alongside WaSH needs, health aspirations and financial circumstances. By leveraging these motivations and pre-existing, self-determined marketing exchanges, WaSH practitioners may be able to foster WaSH marketing exchanges consistent with local context and capabilities, in turn improving community physical, mental and social health.
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    Markets and Marketing Research on Poverty and its Alleviation: Summarizing an evolving Logic toward Human Capabilities, Well-being Goals, and Transformation
    (SAGE Publications (UK and US), 2017-05-15) Sridharan, S.; Barrington, Dani J.; Saunders, S. J.
    Marketing practitioners and business scholars now view some of the world’s poorest communities as profitable growth markets. Hence a market-based approach to poverty alleviation has gathered momentum. This article traces the evolution of such a market-based approach over four decades and highlights a gradual trend away from a deficit-reduction approach (focused on constraints and justice) towards an opportunity-expansion approach (focused on capabilities and well-being). This trend is summarized in an analytical framework of human capabilities, well-being goals and transformative impact evolved from the literature. The framework is then used to analyse the practice of sanitation marketing, which has emerged as a key method in one of the highest priority domains in international development discourse – sanitation. The article concludes with a discussion of how contemporary work can further take forward the key tenets of the framework and guide the development of ‘good markets’ for the poor.