RURAL MARKETING-CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

There is a great opportunity for the marketers in the rural areas. Two-thirds of countries consumers live in rural area.  Naturally the rural markets form an important part of the total market of India. Our nation have around 450 districts, and approximately 630000 villages with different parameters such as literacy levels, accessibility, income levels, distances from nearest towns, etc. Around 700 million people, or 70% of India's population, live in villages in rural areas. 90% of the rural population is concentrated in villages with a population of less than 2000. Going rural  can be said as the new marketing mantra.

             How much worth the rural market is can be well explained from the Coca-Cola case. Coca-Cola India doubled the number of outlets in rural areas from 80,000 in 2001 to 160,000 in 2003, which increased market penetration from 13 per cent to 25 per cent. It brought down the average price of its products from Rs 10 to Rs 5, thereby bridging the gap between soft drinks and other local options like tea, butter milk or lemon water. It also tapped local forms of entertainment like annual haats and fairs and made huge investments in infrastructure for distribution and marketing. The  rural market accounts for 80 per cent of new Coke drinkers and 30 per cent of its volumes. The rural market for Coca-Cola grew at 37 per cent over the last year, against a 24 per cent growth in urban areas. Per capita consumption in rural areas has doubled in the last two years. The success of a brand in the Indian rural market is unpredictable also it is very difficult to measure the rural market. While the rural market certainly offers a big attraction to marketers, then why not any company can easily enter the market and come out with sizable share. This is mainly because of the reason that the rural market is covered with variety of problems. The main problems in rural marketing are:

      PhysicalDistribution                                       

      Channel Management

      Promotion and Marketing Communication

The problems of physical distribution and channel management adversely affect the service as well as the cost aspect. But the biggest of all the problems is how to communicate and reach these 700 million people. This can be done by using 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.

How to do religious marketing to reach the consumers of the rural area



For that the marketer can concentrate on any of the religious events of places. Within a very short span of time the company will be able to communicate to a huge no of potential customers about the product and the services and can build a brand awareness. Kumbh mela, where about 30 million people, mostly from rural areas, were expected to come over the span of a month. The companies can provided 'touch and feel' demonstrations and distribute free samples. This proved to be extremely effective in advertising to the rural market. Another potential way of creating brand awareness among the rural customer is to provide free services. In 2004,Godrej Consumer Products Ltd is present at the Kumbh Mela, with a kiosk and a team of about five people, adding more people on the main bathing days. These activities are focused mainly on raising awareness of, and inducing sampling for its toilet soaps. British tour operator Cox & Kings had played an important initiative by providing assistants to the foreign visitors to visit the Kumbh Mela.Other potential event and places where a marketer can concentrate are Vaishno Devi  where the average no of visitors is approximately 40 lakh  a day, Haridwar, where approximately 50,000 people visit every day, Jagannath Temple where on an average 30,000 people visit every day etc Another important point is that if a company provide free services to the people it will not only help in awareness and advertising but also these activities can be shown as corporate social responsibility. In addition to the above the marketing manager should always keep in mindthat while promoting his product he should not hurt the religious sentiments of the community otherwise that could adversely affect his product. As was the example in case of the movie Passion of Christ where the movie was being banned from display as it was supposed to hurt the particular community and it affected the movie in a very big way.

                                                                            MD ZEYAUL HAQUE

                                                                                                   MBA, B.Sc (math)

                                                                                                  Dip In Com & Urdu