Page 102 - DMGT509_RURAL MARKETING

Unit 5: Rural Consumer

5.9 Heterogeneity of Rural Consumers Notes

It is well established that consumers in rural areas are different from consumers in urban areas.
The rural market itself is diverse with vastly different behaviour across different geographical
locations or across buyer groups. The rural consumers have their share of the rich and poor.
Their purchases reflect their incomes, physical environment, cultural and social practices,
perceptions and attitudes. The place-of-purchase of a product and products age vary according to
consumers, products, and situations and add to the complexity in the behaviour of the rural
consumer. The sophistication in approach to the rural markets is clearly a necessity and starts
with the recognition of the non-existence of the average rural consumer.
5.10 Segmentation Opportunity

The heterogeneity among rural consumers is an opportunity for the marketers to identify
possible ways of segmenting this market. Variations in behaviour and the benefits sought are
important variables to segment the market. A simple and very relevant variable for segmenting
the market is the economic well-being of households. The five categories identified by the
NCAER survey (Natrajan, 2002) uses economic well-being as the basis for their categorisation.
The five categories are:

1. The Affluent/very rich: Households owning personal car/ jeep and other products.
2. The Well-off: Households owning any/all of these—air conditioners, motor cycle, scooter,
washing machine, refrigerator, colour television with other durable products but not car/
jeep.
3. The Climbers: Households owning any/all of these— moped, VCR/VCP, mixer grinder,
sewing machine, audio equipment (two-in-ones, etc.), black & white television, geyser
with other durable products but not those mentioned under the first two categories.
4. The Aspirants: Households owning any/all of these— bicycle, electric fans, electric iron
with other durables but not mentioned under the first three categories.
5. The Destitute: Households other than those classified under Categories 1 to 4 above
(owning any/all/none of these— wristwatches, pressure cooker, mono cassette recorder,
transistor/radio).
The rural markets have almost the same number of households in the ‘well-off’ category as in
the urban markets even though it is a smaller segment within the rural market. The number of
households in the category of ‘well-off’ in the urban market is 29.45 million and the number of
households in this category in the rural market is 27.36 million (NCAER, 2003).
The above categorization of the market has the advantage that it captures the variations in the
consumption pattern and that it is a basis of segmenting both the urban and rural markets. This
assists the marketer in developing and comparing the marketing strategy in both these markets. The
very advantage of ability to compare can be seen as a disadvantage by marketers who see this
common classification as resulting in inadequate appreciation of the peculiarities of the rural markets.
Some rural marketers have applied a segmentation method developed for the rural markets.
A popular approach to segmenting the rural markets is the ‘Socioeconomic Classification’.
Socio-economic Classification (SEC) approach to segmentation used by certain marketers also
indicates that a large percentage of consumers are in the lower segments of the SEC. All the
same, about 9 million households belong to the affluent class The type of segmentation to be
used differs even within rural markets depending on the product, competition, characteristics of

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