Why companies go BOP: An exploratory study in Chinese context

“Alleviating poverty through market-based approach” is increasingly capturing the attention of academia and practitioners. However, there remains a lack of empirical and theoretical work on why companies are interested in exploring BOP market. We conducted a multi-case study of the motivations and contextual factors that induce firms´ BOP initiatives. Based on the analytic induction on eight companies in China, three motivations were revealed: legitimacy, corporate social responsibility, and competitiveness. These motivations are influenced by three level of contextual conditions: the institutional context, the organizational context and the individual context. Our research has made insightful expansion and contributions to the existing BOP literature.