Economy and Colonialism

Because colonialism is the domination of one society by another (Novak & Laird, 2010) I believe this article is not an example of it. The companies are not only marketing to the low-income families, but they are going in and living with them so that they can figure out how to influence them to buy their products in the future. To me, this is closer to capitalism than to domination.

One positive that they mentioned in the article that has come from getting to know the people is the pay as you go plan. They know that the people need concrete or lumber, but are too poor to buy it all at once, so they are able to pay a little bit at a time. I reminds me of when you go to college you can use a rent-to-own center and buy couches or tables and pay a little at a time. Another positive is that these companies are creating smaller, more compact packages that are less expensive specifically for this market so that these people can afford to buy the items.

Negatives from direct marketing would be excessive spending from people that don’t have the money to begin with and because they are cutting costs in order to sell products at a lower cost the products may not be at the proper quality level that they should be at in order to be sold. Another negative may be getting into debt with the pay as you go system. I’m not sure if they would be allowed to receive materials before paying off the ones used before, but if so they would be able to dig themselves a hole very quickly. Here in our society we have credit cards and it is almost impossible to get denied for one these days whether you have a source of income or not. There are too many people in our society who are digging themselves into or out of debt right now.

I believe the modernization theory is the most applicable to the expansion of global markets to the poor, low income and indigenous communities. The goal of the modernization theory is that those of a low income can eventually be financially