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In recent years, rural markets have acquired much significance among the industries, as the overall growth of the economy has resulted into substantial increase in the purchasing power of the rural communities. On account of green revolution, the rural areas are consuming a large quantity of industrial and urban manufactured products. In this context, a special marketing strategy, namely, rural marketinghas emerged.
Resume of Rural Market
More than 800 million people living in rural areas.
The education standards are increased considerably.
The number of middle income and high income households in rural India.
Government stressed more on rural development initiatives.
Increasing agricultural productivity leading to growth of rural disposable income.
Consensus tendency preference of urban and rural customers.
Availability of information through television and other media.
These are all the prime cause and strengthen the stuff of rural marketing. The taste and preference of the rural and urban category are almost same, but marketing strategy could not be like that.
Tapping and capturing strategy
Prospecting is the first and foremost among the all marketing techniques, today many companies don't have adequate customer base. This is reason for failure, prospecting is more important for the service based industries. If the prospecting strategy is done properly, there is no problem in procuring customer to the product.
So far rural market is untapped fully. There are several difficulties confronting the attempt to fully explore rural markets. The notion of rural markets in India is still in evolving shape, and the sector poses a variety of challenges. Distribution costs and non availability of retail outlets are major problems faced by the marketers. The success of a brand in the Indian rural market is as unpredictable as rain. Many brands, which should have been successful, have failed miserably. This is because, most firms try to extend marketing plans that they use in urban areas to the rural markets.
Marketing and Retention Strategy
Before marketing of goods, the company must be aware of the unique consumption patterns, tastes, and needs of the rural consumers should be analyzed at the product planning stage so that they match the needs of the rural people. Therefore, marketers need to understand the social dynamics and attitude variations within each village though nationally it follows a consistent pattern. The main problems in rural marketing is concerned with understand the rural consumer, poor infrastructure facilities, inadequate distribution channels, inappropriate promotion and marketing communication. Dynamics of rural markets differ from other market types, and similarly rural marketing strategies are also significantly different from the marketing strategies aimed at an urban or industrial consumer.
Marketing companies need to understand the consciousness of the rural consumers and then acting to capture rural customers is recommended. Rural marketing involves more intensive personal selling efforts compared to urban marketing. Firms should refrain from designing goods for the urban markets and subsequently pushing them in the rural areas. To effectively tap the rural market a brand must associate it with the same things the rural folks do. This can be done by utilizing the various rural folk media to reach them in their own language and in large numbers so that the brand can be associated with the celebrations, festivals, melas and other activities where they assemble.
Distribution and Communication strategy
Distribution channel is one of the ways could be using company delivery vans which can serve two purposes, it can take the products to the customers in every nook and corner of the market and it also enables the firm to establish direct contact with them and thereby facilitate sales promotion. However, only the bigwigs can adopt this channel. The companies with relatively fewer resources can go in for syndicated distribution where a tie-up between non-competitive marketers can be established to facilitate distribution. If marketing managers use these feeder towns they will easily be able to cover a large section of the rural population.
Firms must be very careful in choosing the vehicle to be used for communication. Only limited part of the rural population has access to a vernacular newspaper. So, the audio visuals must be planned to convey a right message to the rural folk. The rich, traditional media forms like folk dances, puppet shows, etc with which the rural consumers are familiar and comfortable, can be used for high impact product campaigns.
Conclusion
The effective strategy implementation like prospecting, attracting, retaining, facilitating, and maintaining strong relationship will give maximized return to the marketers.
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