"Alleviating poverty through the pursuit of profit" has become a catch phrase for many entrepreneurs and business people who started to focus their businesses on the lower incomes segments of the population at the "Base of the Pyramid" (BOP). Despite such business interests, there is, as yet, insufficient theoretical and empirical work done in this emerging field. Social embeddedness, which facilitates the leveraging of local knowledge and expertise and the earning of the trust of the local people, is deemed essential for the successful implementation of a BOP strategy. What does social...