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The availability of new plant-based burgers, designed to address the environmental, health, and ethical issues associated with animal husbandry, represents a significant transition toward the alternative protein market. These meat substitutes aim at providing climate and health-conscious consumers with valuable options while maintaining the typical taste and feel of animal products. This study explores the appeal of alternative meat burgers as an option for reducing individual and collective meat consumption. We analyzed 169 U.S. burger consumers who tasted and reported their purchase intent for four types of burgers: a traditional beef burger, a mushroom/beef blended burger, a plant-based burger made with pea protein, and a plant-based burger made with animal-like protein (this refers to Impossible™ products that use a heme protein as an ingredient to closely replicate the mouthfeel and experience of eating a beef burger). We found that information about the product composition plays a critical role in predicting purchase intent. Moreover, product information increased purchase intent for all the burgers, except for the pea-protein one, and the provided information had the highest impact on the beef burger. Purchase intent could also be predicted by certain consumer socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, political affiliation, and income) as well as behavioral attitudes toward beef, blended, and plant-based products. Our results can help identify effective strategies in promoting meat alternatives, particularly in efforts to substitute traditional beef burgers with plant-based substitutes.

Over the last half-decade, corporate interest in Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) — strategies for profitably serving the world’s lowest income consumers—has dropped precipitously or migrated to the CSR (i.e., philanthropic) side of the business. We contend that these trends stem from a fundamental misalignment generated when BOP is framed and managed as a market-based solution to poverty alleviation rather than an internally competitive investment opportunity. Examining macro, meso, and micro dimensions of a company’s core operations, we argue that if corporations are to make BOP part of their investment portfolios, there needs to be four changes to management practice which ensure business fundamentals guide decision-making. First, proponents need to drop the development-infused term “Bottom of the Pyramid” and communicate in terms familiar to and used by the majority of business managers in emerging market country offices. Second, in framing the business case, managers need to leave behind exaggerated, emotionally-tinged claims in favor of concrete, bounded opportunities that address the objectives and investment parameters of a specific unit in the company. Third, at the field level, managers need to reorient their focus from co-creation and community engagement strategies to the business economic drivers of business unit profitability. Finally, to evaluate projects and investments, managers need to measure outputs that link directly to business performance and curtail the growing overemphasis on ”impact assessments.”