By Justin Wood
CFO Asia, April '06
(excerpt)

In Asia, analysis from Marakon Associates, a strategy consultancy, takes a slightly different approach. Marakon uses household income as its benchmark, and looks at the proportion of households in Asia that earn less than US$5,000 per year – a figure widely regarded as defining the boundary between spending on necessities and spending on discretionary items. According to this approach, 87% of Asia’s households can be thought of as bottom of the pyramid.