Rural Marketing

Definitions: Rural marketing is a process of developing, pricing, promoting, and distributing rural specific goods and services leading to desired exchange with rural customers to satisfy their needs and wants, and also to achieve organizational objectives.

The Rural Marketing is a two-way process, i.e.

Urban to Rural: FMCG Goods, Agricultural fertilizers, automobiles, etc. are offered by the urban market to the rural market.

Rural to Urban: The agricultural supplies viz. Fruits, vegetables, flowers, milk, etc. is offered from the rural market to the urban market.

The marketers are following the strategy to “Go Rural” because of the following attractions in the rural market:

• Large Population: Still, the majority of the population in India resides in Villages and therefore, the marketers find more potential in the rural areas and direct their efforts to penetrate the rural market.
• Increased Income: The income and the purchasing power of the rural people have increased. With the use of modern agricultural equipment and technology, the farmers can produce more and can get better returns for their agricultural produce. The increased income motivates a farmer to improve his livelihood by purchasing a good quality product and thus, the marketer gets an opportunity to enter into the rural market.
• Competition in Urban Market: There is a lot of competition in the Urban market, where people are well aware of the goods and services and have created a brand loyalty. Therefore, the marketers move to the rural market to escape the intense completion and generate revenues from the untapped areas.
• Improved Infrastructure facilities: Today, many villages are well connected with the roads and transportation facilities that enables the marketer to access the rural market and promote his goods and services. With the growth in telecom services, the rural people can be reached easily via mobile phones.
• Saturated Urban Market: Also, the marketers may move to the rural markets, when the urban market has reached the saturation point, the i.e. market is well stuffed with the products, and the consumers are not likely to make a frequent purchase due to the varied options available in the market.
• Support of Financial Institutions: Several Co-operative banks and public sector banks offer the loan facility to the rural people at low-interest rates. With the loan, the purchasing power of an individual increases, thus resulting in a better standard of living.
• New Employment Opportunities: The Government is running several employment opportunity programmes, with the intention to engage people in other activities apart from the agriculture occupation.The Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY), Training Rural Youth for self-Employment are the certain programmes, designed to increase the livelihood of rural people.

Concept of Rural Marketing:

The concept of Rural Marketing in India Economy has always played an influential role in the lives of people. In India, leaving out a few metropolitan cities, all the districts and industrial townships are connected with rural markets. The rural market in India generates bigger revenues in the country as the rural regions comprise of the maximum consumers in this country. The rural market in Indian economy generates almost more than half of the country’s income.

Rural marketing in Indian economy can be classified under two broad categories.

These are:

• The market for consumer goods that comprise of both durable and non-durable goods
• The market for agricultural inputs that include fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, and so on.

The concept of rural marketing in India is often been found to forms ambiguity in the mind of people who think rural marketing is all about agricultural marketing. However, rural marketing determines the carrying out of business activities bringing in the flow of goods from urban sectors to the rural regions of the country as well as the marketing of various products manufactured by the non-agricultural workers from rural to urban areas.

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