Page 59 - DMGT509_RURAL MARKETING

Rural Marketing

Notes
Did u know? 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.

3.2 Significance of Rural Markets

The rural markets are estimated to be growing fastly compared to the urban markets. The
potentiality of rural markets is said to be like a ‘woken up sleeping giant’. These facts are
substantiated in a study of market growth conducted by various researches. In recent years,
rural markets have acquired significance in countries like China and India, as the overall growth
of the economy has resulted into substantial increase in the purchasing power of the rural
communities. On account of the green revolution in India, the rural areas are consuming a large
quantity of industrial and urban manufactured products. In this context, a special marketing
strategy, namely, rural marketing has taken shape. Sometimes, rural marketing is confused with
agricultural marketing – the later denotes marketing of produce of the rural areas to the urban
consumers or industrial consumers, whereas rural marketing involves delivering manufactured
or processed inputs or services to rural producers or consumers.

A number of factors have been recognized as responsible for the rural market boom to come
into existence:
1. Increase in population and hence increase in demand.

2. A marked increase in the rural income due to agrarian prosperity.
3. Standard of living is also increasing in rural areas.
4. Large inflow of investment for rural development programmes from government and
other sources.
5. Increased contact of rural people with their urban counterparts due to development of
transport and wide communication network.

6. Increase in literacy and educational level and resultant inclination to sophisticated lives
by the rural folks.
7. Inflow of foreign remittances and foreign made goods into rural areas.

8. Change in the land tenure systems causing a structural change in the ownership patterns
and consequent changes in the buying behaviour.
9. Rural markets are laggards in picking up new products. This will help the companies to
phase their marketing efforts. This will also help to sell inventories of products out dated
in urban markets.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:

1. A ........................ should be conducted before launching the business.
2. The most important factor is the ........................, as the rural market consists of different
groups and socio economic class.

3. The people will be from different cultures and ........................ background.

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