On the Viability of Fixing Leaky Supply Chains for the Poor Through Benefit Transfers: A Call for Joint Distribution
研究了银行通过扩展服务覆盖最贫困客户对其绩效的影响，发现该做法效果不佳，质疑其商业可扩展性，并提出联合分销作为替代方案。
Supply chain managers have yet to solve the conundrum of profitably distributing and selling to the poorest consumers. Most prevailing methods of addressing this problem take one of two contrasting approaches—that is, (1) price subsidization or (2) benefits/cash transfers. The former has been heavily studied in the literature with the consensus being that it is highly inefficient and prone to leaks. We investigate the viability of the latter by focusing on how branching out to reach the poorest customers impacts the performance of banks. Results indicate that the impacts of this approach are deleterious, thereby questioning its commercial scalability. Therefore, we argue that this approach may also have only limited potential in terms of being an effective, large‐scale solution to the problem of access for the poor. Instead, a third approach to achieve scalable Bottom of the Pyramid growth and development needs to be considered—cultivating partnerships through joint distribution.