There are people in this world who have little or no access to basic needs and they struggle financially, living on less than a handful of dollars a day. A better understanding of how to supply/serve the world's poor is needed. In this paper, through the lens of Porter's value chain framework we investigate the challenges and opportunities social enterprises face in base‐of‐pyramid (BoP) markets based on secondary data on 23 organizations. Our contribution is twofold: First, we analyze value chain complexities for the social enterprise based on the value creation role (consumer, coproducer) and income level (poverty, extreme poverty) of the local population. We find that nature of customers’ requirements varies across customer segments in the BoP markets and social enterprises face unique challenges in fulfilling such differentiated demand patterns. Second, we develop an affordability–accessibility framework that helps to identify the situations that may be favorable/unfavorable for social enterprises to meet the challenges in BoP markets. We make four propositions that social enterprises may use to cope with difficulties in affordability and accessibility. Our findings will be useful for such organizations to understand and design better supply chains for the base of pyramid.

中文翻译：

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通过价值链复杂性分析确定社会企业服务于金字塔基础市场的关键成功因素

这个世界上有些人几乎没有或根本没有基本需求，他们在经济上挣扎，每天的生活费不足几美元。需要更好地了解如何为世界上的穷人提供/服务。本文通过Porter价值链框架的视角，基于23个组织的二级数据，调查了社会企业在金字塔底（BoP）市场中面临的挑战和机遇。我们的贡献是双重的：首先，我们根据当地居民的价值创造角色（消费者，共同生产者）和收入水平（贫困，赤贫）来分析社会企业的价值链复杂性。我们发现，在BoP市场中，客户需求的性质随客户群的不同而不同，并且社会企业在满足这种差异化需求模式方面面临独特的挑战。第二，我们建立了一个可负担性-可及性框架，该框架有助于确定社会企业应对BoP市场挑战可能有利/不利的情况。我们提出了四个命题，社会企业可以用来应对可负担性和可及性方面的困难。我们的发现对于此类组织了解和设计金字塔基础更好的供应链将很有用。我们提出了四个命题，社会企业可以用来应对可负担性和可及性方面的困难。我们的发现对于此类组织了解和设计金字塔基础更好的供应链将很有用。我们提出了四个命题，社会企业可以用来应对可负担性和可及性方面的困难。我们的发现对于此类组织了解和设计金字塔基础更好的供应链将很有用。