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The vast consumer market at the bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) segment offers a lucrative business proposition for organizations, but this terrain is challenging. One effective strategy to address this issue can be through a robust consumer-brand relationship by fostering a sense of brand gratitude among BOP customers. The study aims to investigate the phenomenon of brand gratitude among BOP customers in emerging markets, such as India. By using consumer embeddedness and market separation theory, this study determines the different factors that can lead subsistence market buyers to feel deeply grateful for brands. Through a comprehensive qualitative study, where marketing professionals working in BOP markets, rural retailers, and BOP customers were interviewed, the study developed a conceptual framework consisting of utilitarian, emotional, and symbolic values. These elements will help BOP customers appreciate the brand, leading to reciprocal behaviors like brand loyalty, repurchases, and advocacy. These outcomes are crucial for every company, especially those navigating the challenging BOP markets. A few studies offer techniques for organizations to establish strong consumer-brand relationships at BOP, and doing so with the goal of generating brand gratitude among this customer segment is uncommon. The current study examines the concept of brand gratitude at BOP, which has rarely been done before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In dealing with human corpses, notions of dignity play a decisive role, especially within legal texts that regulate a corpse's handling. However, it is quite unclear how the claim "Treat human corpses with dignity!" should be understood and justified. Drawing upon examples and problems from forensic medicine, this paper explores three possible lines of interpreting such demands: (a) positions that closely link the dignity of the human corpse to the dignity of the former living persons and (b) accounts that derive the dignity of the dead from consequentialist considerations. We argue that both lines heavily rely on contestable metaphysical claims and therefore propose an alternative account for the dignity of the dead. Our proposal (c) focuses on action-guiding attitudes and the symbolic value of the dead. Such a conception allows for a variety of morally appropriate groundings of individual attitudes. It avoids metaphysically troublesome premises and, at the same time, allows to classify certain actions and manners of acting as clearly inappropriate and blameworthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We sometimes have reasons to perform actions due to what they would communicate. Those who have discussed such reasons have understood what an action 'communicates' as what it conventionally expresses. Brennan and Jaworski argue that when a convention ensures that expressing the appropriate thing would be costly, we should change or flout the convention. I argue that what really matters is often what attitudes we indicate rather than conventionally express, using social science to show that indicating our attitudes is often unavoidably costly, and sometimes worth the cost. I use this account to defend communicative arguments for egalitarian distributive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the connection between discrimination and entrepreneurship. We contend that the entrepreneur is the central mechanism through which inefficiencies associated with discrimination are competed away. In addition to illuminating the mechanism through which existing discrimination tends to be eliminated, we also consider the more difficult case of consumer discrimination. The standard assumption is that consumer discrimination will not be competed away through market forces. In contrast, we find that entrepreneurs can correct the inefficiencies associated with this form of discrimination by influencing the costs and benefits associated with consumer discrimination. We empirically analyze the integration of black players in Major League Baseball to illustrate our theoretical arguments regarding entrepreneurship and consumer discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]