Emerging Markets (EMs) have become the growth engines of the world. Driven by demographics, economic liberalization, an expanding middle class, and better capitalization of resources, these markets now represent 36% of the global GDP. They are expected to offer a USD 30 trillion market potential by 2025, of which China and India may generate as much as USD 10 trillion in annual revenue by 2020 itself. Leading multinationals (MNCs) have been entering EMs in increasing numbers because their home markets for existing goods and services are saturated. However, MNCs still earn just 17% of their total revenues from EMs (Atsmon, Child, Dobbs, & Narasimhan, 2012; Silverstein, Singhi, Liao, & Michael, 2012). Many companies and brands have entered, invested and faltered in these markets due to a wide range of factors. For example, China’s cultural, political, regulatory and economic complexity has led to failures for companies like Uber, Amazon, Google and several marketers of luxury products (Salomon, 2016; The Economist, 2014). A major route to success in EMs, is growing the pie i.e., expanding the size of the market by bringing large numbers of non-users into the consumption fold. However, this can be a significant challenge due to the negative impact of five unique characteristics of these markets: market heterogeneity, sociopolitical governance, unbranded competition, chronic resource shortages, and inadequate infrastructure. EMs are highly diverse from an economic, social, cultural, geographical and historical perspective. About 50% of the population remains at or near the bottom of the pyramid (BoP). Vast numbers live in undeveloped rural areas. Even the newly burgeoning middle classes either do not use many products (i.e., goods and services), or use unbranded ones or local/regional brands. Moreover, sociopolitical institutions such as faith and clan cultures far outweigh competition. Low disposable incomes, lack of skilled labor, shortages even of basic utilities, broken supply chains and lack of infrastructure are some of the many contextual realities that flummox MNCs in these markets (Sheth, 2011). Managing and overcoming the negative impact of such EM characteristics requires deep market insights but the central focus in marketing strategy research has been on companies and on developed markets. The two dominant themes that have captured most international marketing research attention are (a) strategic marketing concepts like standardization versus adaptation of the overall strategy (c.f., Cavusgil & Zou, 1994), and (b) issues like segmentation, targeting, positioning and the relationships between individual marketing mix elements. Global research on product, price and promotion have provided some insights on consumers in select countries (c.f., Erdem, Zhao, & Valenzuela, 2004, Roth, 1995, Farley, Hayes, & Kopalle, 2004, Chintagunta & Desiraju, 2005).