The Conservation Marketing Equation manual is designed as a decision support tool to be used by an individual or project team whose goal is to better understand product development and marketing that promotes conservation and social equity.

As a decision support tool, the manual is intended to assist conservation and development professionals in choosing business opportunities (products or services) that conserve biodiversity while reducing poverty for marginalized rural people. The assumption is that the proposed opportunity needs to be financially sustainable, and this tool provides specific information and product worksheets to assess product market readiness.

The manual allows practitioners to prioritize their product development efforts in the areas in which they lack information, and aims to provide valuable insight on where to find this information. The examples used throughout the text incorporate actual product development and marketing lessons from a decade of field work by EnterpriseWorks/VITA and its partners in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Additionally, the manual includes five interactive worksheets that assist in priority-setting, product context and costing, and subsector analysis.