Presented by: Neelam Singh

Introduction to Rural Marketing

The first five years of the new millennium will
belong neither to the urban markets which have reached saturation and where margins are under pressure not to the export markets, which suffer from inadequate infrastructure back home, and uncompetitive prices overseas. It will belong to rural marketing.

RURAL MARKETING
In the India context, the word RURAL is so much associated with agriculture and farmers that rural marketing tends to be seen as a marketing of inputs or outputs related to agriculture.

What is Rural Marketing?

Rural marketing is a function which manages all those activates involved in assessing, stimulating and converting the purchasing power into an effective demand for specific products and services, and moving them to the people in rural area to create satisfaction and a standard of living to them and thereby achieves the goals of the organization.

Rural v\s Urban

OCCUPATION:
Rural: Cultivators n few non agricultural pursuits. Urban: manufacturing, trade, commerce, professions

Size of community
Rural: open farms & small community are vly co-related Urban: urbanity & size of community are +vly co-related

Density of population
Rural:density of population is lower than urban

Mobility
Rural: social mobility less. More migration from villages to town. Urban:social mobility inreases with urbanity.

System of interaction
Rural: less numerous contacts per man. Predominance of personal & relatively durable relations. Urban: Greater complexity, superficiality
& standardized formality in relations.

Attractiveness of rural market

Rural markets have become the new targets to corporate enterprises for two reasons : 1. Urban market has become congested with too many competitors. 2. The market have reached a near saturation point.

Various factors which have made rule markets viable:1. Large population 2. Raising prosperity 3. Growth in consumption 4. Life-style changes 5. Life-cycle advantages 6. Market growth rates higher than urban 7. Rural marketing is not expensive 8. Remoteness is no longer a problem

Now for some facts and figures. The Indian rural market today accounts for only about Rs 8 billion (53 per cent - FMCG sector, 59 per cent durables sale, 100 per cent agricultural products) of the total ad pie of Rs 120 billion, thus claiming 6.6 per cent of the total share. So clearly there seems to be a long way ahead.

Time and again marketing practitioners have waxed eloquent about the potential of the rural market. But when one zeroes in on the companies that focus on the rural market, a mere handful names come to mind. Hindustan Lever Limited (HuL) is top of the mind with their successful rural marketing projects like 'Project Shakti' and 'Operation Bharat'.

In 1998 HuLs personal products unit initiated Project Bharat, the first and largest rural hometo-home operation to have ever been prepared by any company. The project covered 13 million rural households by the end of 1999.

Khaitan fans' ad on a horse cart

"Yaara da Tashan... ads with Aamir Khan created universal appeal for Coca Cola

For HLL, a one rupee or a five rupee sachet or the Kutti Hamam (the small Hamam) helps in giving the consumers a trial opportunity. While it does help in generate volume but not in terms of values. "Till the time that volume value equation is managed better.

Amul is another case in point of aggressive rural marketing

Coca Cola India, Colgate, Eveready Batteries, LG Electronics, Philips, BSNL, Life Insurance Corporation, Cavin Kare, Britannia and Hero Honda to name a few.

Satellite dish antennas reach rural India

In 2000, ITC took an initiative to develop direct contact with farmers who lived in farflung villages in Madhya Pradesh. ITC's Echoupal was the result of this initiative.

Typical shop in rural India stocked with sachets, etc