Talk:Promoting Commercially Viable Supporting Markets

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PLEASE SIGN your comment by using the code: ~~~~. Thanks! Copop 17:23, 1 March 2009 (EST)

Although embedded in parts of the text, it is worth emphasizing the importance of assessing the was the supply is organized (as you would the regular primary value chain). For example, a support markets that are targeting a few major customers or using traditional retail strategies based on physical retail shops will have a difficult time scaling up to meet a mass market’s requirements especially in if the mass market is defined by high transaction-costs such as rural market for farmers. Understanding business strategies within the support market context can help identify where to target or design your intervention to foster innovation in the way support markets engage their value chain customers.

A tool that has been useful in understanding scalability of certain business models is pulling apart the sequence of a transaction to assess incentives for pushing information, how risk is shared and benefits. For example retail expansion models based on moving inventory first to remote location can decrease the incentive to provide information since the push will be to move the product the store has, it increases the risk on the retailer and the local store, it tends to increase the cost of the product because is move small quantities at a time over large distances, and it limits the incentives for service provision by pushing products as oppose to solutions.