What is rural marketing?

Rural Markets are defined as those segments of overall market of any economy,
which are distinct from the other types of markets like stock market, commodity
markets or Labor economics.Typically, a rural market will represent a community
in a rural area with a population of 2500 to 30000.

Rural marketing is a two way marketing process that includes the flow of goods
and services from rural to urban areas and the flow of goods and services from
urban to rural ares, as well as the flow of goods and services within rural areas.

What rural market buys?

Rural India buys small packs, as they are perceived as value for money. There is
brand stickiness, where a consumer buys a brand out of habit and not really by
choice. Brands rarely fight for market share; they just have to be visible in the
right place. Even expensive brands, such as Close-Up, Marie biscuits and Clinic
shampoo are doing well because of deep distribution, many brands are doing well
without much advertising support — Ghadi, a big detergent brand in North India,
is an example.

Why Rural Market?

The Indian rural market has a huge demand base and offers great opportunities to
marketers. Two-thirds of Indian consumers live in rural areas and almost half of
the national income is generated here. The reasons for heading into the rural
areas are fairly clear. The urban consumer durable market for products like colour
TVs, washing machines, refrigerators and air conditioners is growing annually at
between 7 per cent and 10 per cent.

The rural market is zooming ahead at around 25 per cent annually. "The rural
market is growing faster than urban India now," says Venugopal Dhoot, chairman
of the Rs 989 -crore(Rs billion) Videocon Appliances. "The urban market is a
replacement and up gradation market today," adds Samsung's director,
marketing, Ravinder Zutshi.

this all will be done by Abhinav Singhal.

Strategies involved:- Gargi Raparia
Rural markets and rural marketing involve a number of strategies, which include:

 Client and location specific promotion

 Joint or cooperative promotion..
 Bundling of inputs
 Management of demand
 Developmental marketing
 Unique selling proposition (USP)
 Extension services
 Business ethics
 Partnership for sustainability

Client and Location specific promotion involves a strategy designed to be suitable to the
location and the client.

Joint or co-operative promotion strategy involves participation between the marketing

agencies and the client.

'Bundling of inputs' denote a marketing strategy, in which several related items are sold to the
target client, including arrangements of credit, after-sale service, and so on.

Management of demand involve continuous market research of buyer’s needs and problems at
various levels so that continuous improvements and innovations can be undertaken for a
sustainable market performance.

Developmental marketing refer to taking up marketing programmes keeping the development

objective in mind and using various managerial and other inputs of marketing to achieve these
objectives.

Media, both traditional as well as the modern media, is used as a marketing strategy.

Unique Selling Propositions (USP) involve presenting a theme with the product to attract the
client to buy that particular product. For examples, some of famous Indian Farm equipment
manufactures have coined catchy themes, which they display along with the products, to attract
the target client, that is the farmers. English version of some of such themes would read like:

 The heartbeats of rural India

 With new technique for a life time of company
 For the sake of progress and prosperity
Extension Services denote, in short, a system of attending to the missing links and providing the
required know-how.

Ethics in Business. form, as usual, an important plank for rural markets and rural marketing.

Partnership for sustainability involve laying and building a foundation for continuous and long
lasting relationship.

Scope& Opportunities & Problems: Khushboo Mansinghka

Opportunities:

* Infrastructure is improving rapidly.

- In 50 years only 40% villages connected by road, in next 10 years another 30%.
- More than 90 % villages electrified, though only 44% rural homes have electric
connections.
- Rural telephone density has gone up by 300% in the last 10 years; every 1000+ pop is
connected by STD.
* Social Indicators have improved a lot between 1981 and 2001
- Number of "pucca" houses doubled from 22% to 41% and "kuccha" houses halved (41%
to 23%)
- Percentage of BPL families declined from 46% to 27%
- Rural Literacy level improved from 36% to 59%
* Low penetration rates in rural so there are many marketing opportunities.

Problems:
Problems related to rural marketing

The rural market offers a vast untapped potential; it should also be recognized that it is not
that easy to operate in rural market because of several problems. Rural marketing is thus a
time consuming affair and requires considerable investments in terms of evolving
appropriate strategies with a view to tackle the problems. The problems are.

Barter system

In the developing country like India, even today the barter system i.e., exchange of goods
for goods exists. This is a major obstacle in the way of development of rural marketing.

Underdeveloped people and underdeveloped markets

The agricultural technology has tried to develop the people and market in rural areas.
Unfortunately, the impact of the technology is not felt uniformly through out the country.
Some districts in Punjab, Hariyana or Western Uttar pradesh where rural consumer is
somewhat comparable to his urban counterpart, there are large areas and groups of people
who have remained beyond the technological breakthrough. In addition, the farmers with
small agricultural land holdings have also been unable to take advantage of the new
technology.

Lack of proper physical communication facilities

Nearly 50 percent of the villages in the country do not have all weather roads. Physical
communication to these villages is highly expensive. Even today, most villages in eastern
part of the country are inaccessible during monsoon season.

Inadequate Media coverage for rural communication

A large number of rural families in own radios and television sets there were also
community radio and T.V sets. These have been used to diffuse agricultural technology to
rural areas. However the coverage relating to marketing is inadequate

Many language and Dialects

The number of languages and dialects vary from state to state region to region.  This type
of distribution of population warrants appropriate strategies to decide the extent of
coverage of rural market.

Emerging Trends: Jatin Gupta

EMERGING TRENDS IN MARKETS

ONLINE RURAL MARKET (INTERNET, NICNET):

Rural people can use the two-way communication through on – line service for crop
information, purchases of Agri-inputs, consumer durable and sale of rural produce online at
reasonable price. Farm information online marketing easily accessible in rural areas because
of spread of telecommunication facilities all over India. Agricultural information can get
through the Internet if each village has small information office.

INFORMATION THROUGH LOCAL AGRICULTURE INPUT DEALERS

Most of the dealers have direct touch with the local farmers; these farmers need awareness
about pests, decease, fertilizers, seeds, technology and recent developments.  For this
information, farmers mostly depend on local dealers. For development of rural farmers the
government may consider effective channel and keep information at dealers, for farmer
education hang notice board and also train the dealer recent changes and developments in
agriculture.

National Chain Stores:  large number of stores set up in different rural areas throughout the
country by the same organization for marketing its products.  Thus national chain stores can
serve large number of customers in rural area.
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Cost benefit can be achieved through development of information technology at the

doorsteps of villagers; most of the rural farmers need price information of agri-produce and
inputs. If the information is available farmers can take quick decision where to sell their
produce, if the price matches with local market farmer no need to go near by the city and
waste of money & time it means farmers can enrich their financial strength.

NEED BASED PRODUCTION

Supply plays major role in price of the rural produce, most of the farmers grow crops in
particular seasons not through out the year, it causes oversupply in the market and drastic
price cut in the agricultural produce. Now the information technology has been improving if
the rural people enable to access the rural communication, farmers awareness can be
created about crops and forecasting of future demand, market taste. Farmers can equates
their produce to demand and supply, they can create farmers driven market rather than
supply driven market. If the need based production system developed not only prices but
also storage cost can be saved. It is possible now a days the concept of global village.

APANAMANDI / KISAN MANDI / RYTHUBAZAAR

There is a need to promote direct agricultural marketing model through retail outlets of
farmer's co-operatives in urban areas. The direct link between producers and consumers
would work in two ways: one, by enabling farmers to take advantage of the high price and
secondly, by putting downward pressure on the retail prices.

RURAL AGRI- EXPORT

Rural produce, raw fruits and vegetable, processing goods, have the potential market in
Asian, Europe and western countries. Particularly soudhy countries have commendable
potential for Indian rural produce.