Rural Marketing

RURAL MARKETING

Gone are the days when a rural consumer went to a nearby city to buy “branded products and services”. Time was when only a select household consumed branded goods, be it tea or jeans. There were days when big companies flocked to rural markets to establish their brands. Today, rural markets are critical for every marketer - be it for a branded shampoo or an automobile. Time was when marketers thought van campaigns, cinema commercials and a few wall paintings would suffice to entice rural folks under their folds. Thanks to television, today a customer in a rural area is quite literate about myriad products that are on offer in the market place. If television could change the language of brand communication in rural India, affordable Web connectivity through various types of communication hubs will surely impact the currency of information exchange. As the electronic ethos and IT culture moves into rural India, the possibilities of change are becoming visible.

Earlier, the general impression was that the rural markets have potential only for agricultural inputs like seed, fertilizers, pesticides, cattle feed and agricultural machinery. There is a growing market for consumer goods as well. On account of the green revolution in India, the rural areas are consuming a large quantity of industrial and urban manufactured products. In this context, a special marketing strategy, namely, rural marketing has taken shape.

A wide array of problems hinders marketers in approaching rural areas with confidence. The lack of fair weather roads, widely dispersed villages, low density of population, lack of bank and credit facilities, multiple tiers, higher costs and administrative problems, and lack of retailers are the problems in rural distribution. Intelligent way of approaching rural areas is required. The emerging distribution approaches include: Cooperative societies, petrol bunks, agricultural input dealers, NGOs, etc. Latest approaches include the... [continues]

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