Digitally mediated value creation for non-commodity base of the pyramid producers

Abstract

Base of the Pyramid (BoP) producers have limited opportunities to create and capture value due to various constraints, which keeps them trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty. The emerging literature on the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the poverty alleviation of BoP producers focuses on ICT-enabled solutions to value capture. However, ICT-enabled solutions to create value at the BoP have received less attention. In this paper, we study the issues surrounding value creation for non-commodity BoP producers by employing a case study of four organisations in rural India. Our findings reveal two critical mechanisms for ICT-enabled value creation in a resource-constrained environment: awareness creation and repeated engagement. We find that ICT-enabled awareness creation has a positive impact on value-added, but this effect decreases as product complexity increases. We also find that ICT-mediated repeated engagement and value-added have an inverted U-shape relationship, with value-added increasing with complexity, but after a threshold, value-added declines with increase in complexity. Building on these findings, we use the lens of value co-creation and media richness perspective to contribute to theory, practice and policy by underscoring how awareness creation and repeated engagement act as key dimensions for value creation. We delineate how limitations in ICT infrastructure can be overcome in resource-constrained environments and explicate a conceptualisation of ICT-mediated joint value creation in general for spatially separated actors.