Bibliometric mapping on sustainable development at the base-of-the-pyramid

Base-of-the-Pyramid (BoP) is a sustainable proposition that calls on private businesses to alleviate public poverty while fulfilling their own interests. Previous studies show the significance of BoP in the advancement of Sustainable Development Goals. Particularly, in the manner of cooperating with people at the bottom of socio-economic pyramid, multinational enterprises can alleviate public poverty and thus promoting sustainable development at the BoP regions. However, the general state and trend of sustainable development-related studies in the BoP domain are not clear; the popular keywords and theoretical orientations have yet to been determined. This study aims to address these issues by analyzing 273 high-impact articles in the related field from the Web of Science database between 2002 and 2018. A mixed review method is adopted, which combines quantitative bibliometric analysis with qualitative content analysis. The results show that an increasing number of sustainable development-related studies are emerging from the BoP domain, particularly concerning social and economic sustainability in developing countries (or regions). Four theoretical orientations are identified, namely subsistence market, sustainable solution, corporate social responsibility and inclusive business. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the related research area and at the same time calls for continuing scholarly exploration. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.