Step-Change: Micro-Entrepreneurs’ Entry into the Middle-Class Market

ABSTRACT

With upcoming middle classes in Africa, micro-entrepreneurs witness new opportunities that can potentially lift them out of poverty. Exploiting these opportunities requires entrepreneurs to make a ‘step-change’ away from the bottom of the pyramid to middle-class markets. This process hosts potential conflicts between informal-sector and formal-sector stakeholders as it requires both new resources and continued access to existing resources. By taking a strategic marketing perspective, this study labels and defines the phenomenon of step-change and offers an explanatory conceptual framework for it. The article draws implications for business development, the gender debate, as well as academic research.

KEYWORDS:

• Social mobility
• poverty
• micro-entrepreneurs
• resource-based view
• business development

Acknowledgements

The authors thank NUFFIC through the Netherlands Program for Institutional Strengthening of Post-secondary Education and Training Capacity, and the Benin government for granting a PhD fellowship to Falylath Babah Daouda for her training.