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This article aims to examine political marketing strategies adopted by the politicians operating in base of the pyramid (BOP) areas and their impact on the BOP voters using the tenets of the social influence theory.

The authors resorted to a qualitative phenomenological inquiry for this study. The responses obtained from two qualitative studies were subjected to thematic analysis. Two thematic maps were integrated into a conceptual model.

Study 1 indicates that the politicians operating at the BOP resort to vote-bank segmentation, clientelism, mobilizing opinion leaders, short guerilla war against opposition and communication bombarding. Study 2 has elaborated on how poor voters perceive these strategies and form their opinions towards the party/candidate.

The findings of this study highlight the need for essential policy formulation to protect BOP consumers from deceptive political tactics.

This study develops a model of the effectiveness of voting strategies at the BOP. It also contributes to the literature on social influence theory by indicating how the three social influence processes (compliance, identification and internalization) result in different ways of accepting political influence.

Dubious investment schemes by unlisted companies are alluring individual investors at the base of the pyramid to invest money and lose them. The purpose of the abstract is to identify the factors that induce the people at base-of-pyramid (BoP) to invest in fraudulent schemes.

Open-ended interviews of people at the BoP from areas in and around Kharagpur town in West Bengal were conducted. Through open coding, codes, categories and themes were generated.

Interpersonal trusts form the central feature of investment fraud. The personal relationship among the community members helps these schemes thrive. False hopes of higher returns within a short span combined with constraints of accessing banking services is another motivation for the people at the base of the pyramid to fall prey to these schemes. With limited education, they find these investment avenues convenient providing scope to the perpetrators of fraud to exploit them. To curb these dubious schemes to flourish and exploit the people at the BoP, financial inclusion on a large scale is required. Moreover, the government should take steps to educate the mass at the base of the pyramid.

This study offers new insights on the victims of investment fraud in India those belonging to the economically weak groups and lower income groups comprising together as the BoP) of the society.