Advertising Strategies and Tactics Applied by the Flea Market Traders to Alleviate Poverty in Zimbabwe. Case of Mupedzanhamo (Harare) and Global Flea Market (Gweru)

Abstract

The once city council mandated flea markets later linked to Small toMedium Enterprises (SMEs) by the Zimbabwean government to lobby for thesustenance of the then poor informal traders, have become booming business inZimbabwe due to advertising strategies and tactics applied by the small scaletraders in Zimbabwe’s urban centres such as Harare and Gweru in particular.Despite facing challenges such as arrests and demolition of their sites by lawenforcement agents and the city council police, these traders managed topressurise local city authorities who later introduced an orderly way of tradingby constructing vending bays. Instead of spreading their wares in the open toadvertise them, the vendors and flea market owners resorted to advertisingtactics such as posters, newspapers, bill boards, disco music, and town crying.Goods brought into Zimbabwe by cross border traders earmarked for flea marketsbusiness now fill urban  centres’ fleamarkets. Customers with different tastes for the goods on offer flood the fleamarkets as a result. Ironically, the once poor illegal flea market traders havebecome rich landlords, commuter omnibus owners and shop owners who now movearound in the city driving latest vehicles. It is from this background thatresearchers looked for advertising tactics and strategies that enabled the oncepoor illegal small scale traders to woo customers who throng their flea marketbays to buy all sorts of foreign goods on offer. The key research methods usedinclude onlooker observation, surveys, interviews, critical discourse analysisand hermeneutics of interpretation. The research found out that although theonce poor flea market owners now rich landlords and business people started assmall scale traders, city council and government’s interventions to formalizeand legalize flea markets resulted in booming business as advertisingstrategies and tactics were applied. The research also found out that fleamarket business is no longer a prerogative for the poor urbanites because eventhe rich business people have also joined to own and even rent markets as thishas become lucrative business. It was clear from the finding of this researchthat poverty, deprivation and vulnerability have become a thing of the pastsince flea markets have become sources of poverty alleviation in Zimbabwe’surban areas changing the illegal small scale traders’ status from rags toriches. The researchers concluded that Zimbabwe is likely to be a flea marketeconomy than a manufacturing economy. The researchers recommend that theGovernment should give full support to the flea market economy as it contributes50% of private centre employment. The Government needs to open up to foreigninvestors to revive the ailing economy. Keywords:Small to Medium  Enterprises (SMEs), advertising strategies, flea markets, poverty alleviation.