Page 7 - DMGT509_RURAL MARKETING

Rural Marketing

Notes 1.1 Why Rural Marketing?

The following areas are the commonest of the worries that trouble the urban marketers, when
they even think of rural markets:

1 The first source of worry is the product price and affordability in the rural markets. With
low income levels, the rural buyer is almost considered a non–buyer, and yet the sales
being made in rural markets by certain companies defies the logic.
2. The next source of worry is the needed distribution patterns with problems arising out of
lack of proper transportation, bad roads adding to the irksome “product availability situation”.
3. Reaching out to the rural customer through advertising poses a major problem due to
illiterate population and lack of media reach.

4. Most importantly, however, it is rural mindsets that create a barrier of significant magnitude
to put off several prospective rural marketers.
As the sellers plan rural marketing, a few strange situations come to their minds as given below:

The seller wants to see the demand pattern of rural markets to become equal to the urban
demand. However, the rural buyer behaviour is considered to be entirely at variance with the
urban mindset. The paradox is compelling the seller into planning severely different marketing
plans for the rural markets. The basic fact that consumers need motivation for buying a particular
product, a specific brand, involves learning the psychographic understanding of the buyers and
not just for the rural urban divide.
The other disturbing factor is the total denial of the rural presence in the geography of the
country. The pristine natural unpolluted air, the beauty of the rural scene is totally lost to the
urban soul. Naturally, the rural tragedies, happiness and the entire rural ethos are alien to the
urban mind. The result can be seen in few reference points available that can benchmark the
stimuli levels needed for the rural buyers. The urban generation of today has no links at all with
the village and its life. The urbanisation of the mindset is total, complete.
The senior generation still believes that the villages are yet enjoying the pastoral bliss, whereas
the villagers enjoy daily dose of Hindi films, either on the TV or in makeshift halls. Village still
gets reflected in the help elders provide to the children in writing school essays on village life.
However, the topic of village has always a short life as it can never sustain a long discussion or
enquiry.
Indians consider the villages to be still living in prehistoric times with people having primitive
passions that evoke fear amongst the urban population, the fear of the unknown. They consider
the village to be “the other India” quite different from the urban India. The village, the urbanite
believes, can be presented as a source of amusement in a reality TV show. The implications of
these urban understandings of the villages are given below:

1. Urban mind has distanced itself from the rural market through the belief that rural
marketing needs specialisation for success.
2. The entire village scene has been stereotyped with the belief that they are all the same in
the entire country.
3. There is yet no attempt at understanding the village buyers and their buying motivations
and this fact is most evident when the rural advertisements are viewed, for e.g., the way
Dhanno sings about her happy life and people in panchayats talking about the new road
likely to come to the village soon and the advent of village fairs with nautankis.
As any marketer of repute will tell, this situation needs to be changed and changed with immediate
effect.

2 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY