Page 28 - DMGT509_RURAL MARKETING

Unit 1: Rural Marketing – An Introduction

associations provide room and board, books, and social activities for students who belong Notes
to cooperatives in university centres. These are concentrated most heavily on the Pacific
coast and in the Midwest.
Affiliation Systems
Efficiency and economy in the operation of cooperative enterprises are generally achieved
by a system of affiliation and centralization. Local cooperatives are served and supplied
by state or regional organizations. In many fields, the regional bodies are united in
national organizations, which, in turn, are federated into still larger national organizations,
such as the American Institute of Cooperation, the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives
and the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA). The NCBA provides a
government lobby for the cooperative movement. Systems of affiliation are characteristics
of the movement in all countries and international affiliation coalesces around the
International Cooperative Alliance, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition
to cooperative effort within their own operations, cooperatives in the U.S. are assisting
more cooperative development among low-income peoples at home and abroad. They
have helped to form commercial fishing cooperatives, provide sewing machines, establish
credit unions, set up programs for loans and life and savings insurance, found cooperative
housing, and couple economic-development projects with member-education programs.
Some of these programs have been aided substantially by contracts from the U.S.
government and by grants from foundations.
Question
Compare the rural cooperatives of the US and India. What can Indian cooperatives learn
from their counterparts?

1.12 Summary

 The green revolution was the result of the government’s policy of research on agriculture.
 Brand image or brand equity is perhaps one of the two most important aspects of any
business, the other being market share.
 Developing synthetic scale through partnerships typically results in larger overheads in
the rural context.
 Pricing in rural markets is tricky because the companies spend more on transporting the
products as compared to transporting them to the cities.

 The demographic changes include diversity in the professional profile of the village folks.
 Firms face the challenges of new competition, both local and global, and of new technologies
as they cater to consumers in business-to-business areas and as individuals.
 The market is undeveloped, as the people who constitute it still lack adequate purchasing
power.
 Rural markets, as part of any economy, have untouched potential.
 The government has enacted laws against child marriages and dowry.

 Companies that have lesser share of the market attempt to increase the same with bigger
thrust on marketing efforts.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 23