Importance of Rural marketing in India
The days have gone in India where people in rural areas used to go to the near by towns to buy a branded products. With the growing number of rural consumers, the opportunities for the branded companies are growing day by day in the rural markets, and these rural markets are playing very significant role in India’s economy.
The rural marketing involves delivering of manufactured or processed products or services to rural producers and consumers by the branded companies. Rural markets are distinct from the other types of markets like commodity markets, stock market or Labor economics, these rural markets represent a community in a rural areas. In countries like China and India the rural markets have acquired significance as the overall growth of their countries economy.
The concept of Rural Marketing have changed the livelihood of people living rural area. The rural market in India has its own entity that has highly influenced many factors such as sociological and behavioral factors in India.
Since from recent years these rural markets have acquired significance in the growth of Indian economy which has increased the purchasing power in the rural areas. Hence the rural areas have drastically increased the consumption of manufactured products. Thus how the concept of special marketing strategy called as rural marketing has emerged.
The present era of rural marketing is getting an importance because of the saturation of the urban market due to the competition in urban market, since most of the consumers are targeted by the marketers. Thus the marketers are emerging to extend their products in such areas where there no exposure to any brands such as rural markets.
As two-thirds of the Indian population live in rural areas, the rural market is vast than expected. The rural marketing strategies are different from urban marketing strategies as the distribution and pricing are challenging in rural markets since the marketers have to understand the rural consumer, with poor infrastructure and no proper communication. So various strategies have to be followed by the companies to work as a part of promoting their product or service according to the mind set of rural population and by changing their mind set of consumption.
However many companies in India have proved to be successful in entering the rural markets with proper understanding of the market and innovative marketing ideas, it is possible to bag the rural markets in India. So the rural market in India is immensely scattered and offers a plenty of opportunities when compared to urban marketing since there are maximum number of population leads to the maximum number of consumers in rural areas.
As the infrastructure is improving rapidly in rural areas in India such as villages connected by roads, electrified,? telephone density has increased, increase in social Indicators, Number of ?pucca? houses doubled, Rural Literacy rate i8s increasing vastly, with low penetration rates in rural areas, all these constitutes many marketing opportunities in rural areas.
And also the rural population are very much are keen on branded goods according to the trends of wanting to move into a state of gradual urbanization in terms of exposure, habits, lifestyles and consumption patterns of goods and services made the marketer to strengthen the distribution and pricing strategies in rural marketing in India.
With the improvement in infrastructure and promising a bright future, many MNC’s like Hindustan Liver, LG electronics, Coca-Cola and the foreign invested telecom companies are foraying into India’s rural markets to expand the market at countryside and foreseeing the vast size and demand in the rural market.