What is Rural Marketing? What are the Unique features of rural marketing? Write a few points on Planning for the rural market.

Meaning of Rural Marketing
Rural marketing simply means marketing in rural areas. Often, rural marketing is confused with agricultural marketing - the latter 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.
 

Rural marketing broadly involves reaching rural customers, estimating their needs and wants and then supplying goods and services to meet these requirements. This could mean carrying out an after-sales service that leads to customer satisfaction and repeat sales. There are different types of rural markets. They are Regular periodic markets, seasonal markets, and daily markets. In Regular periodic markets, the rural people gather once or twice a week on a fixed day to exchange or sell their produce or buy necessities. The seasonal markets are those markets which specialize in few crops like onion, bananas, etc.

The daily markets are permanent with continuous trading activity.

Unique features of rural marketing  

When compared to urban marketing in India, rural marketing has certain unique features. These are summarized as follows.
1. Consumer: The people living in rural areas are traditional and innocent by nature. Their needs are simple. The literacy rate is around 36 percent of the population. Women are mostly illiterate.
 

2. Cultural diversity: Indian villages are truly diverse with respect to languages, religion, culture, tradition and social customs.
 

3. Income levels: Majority of rural people are living below the poverty line. The higher income group have a tendency to migrate to urban areas. It is, therefore, obvious that the rural market consists of cheaper and low-quality necessaries of life. However, after the advent of television, radio and press and improvement in literacy, the lifestyle of rural people is changing. There is a growing preference for new products and luxuries. Toilet soaps, toothpaste, ready-made garments, radio, TV, etc. have been appearing in rural areas. Bicycles, motorcycles, tractors have been replacing old bullock carts.
 

As a result of this, a closed rural market is slowly opening up. Due to the agricultural revolution, increased education the average income level of Indian rural mass is rising and their purchasing power has also increased considerably.
 

4. It is a vast and scattered market. India’s rural market is vast and scattered. The total road length in the rural areas was about 2650 thousand km. Railways also have developed in rural areas.
 

5. Seasonal demand: Farmers receive income during harvest. Most of the purchases are made during this season. There is a heavy rush for shopping on the eve of Diwali, Onam, Ed-ul-fittar, Durga puja, Holi, etc. For meeting the heavy demand, marketing centers and shops need to be ready with stocks.
 

6. Market structure: Rural market consists of private sole traders, co-operatives, fair price shops, and itinerant traders like hawkers, peddlers, cheap jacks, etc. and weekly markets. These marketing organizations are small with less stock and financially not so well.
 

7. Infrastructural facilities: Even after more than 60 years of independence the transport and communication systems have not developed in rural areas. Most roads are dusty and useless during rainy seasons. There is a lack of storage facilities in most of the villages.
 

8. Traditional Life: Life in rural areas is still governed by old customs and superstitions. People do not easily adapt to new practices and products. For example, even the rich farmers do not wear jeans or branded shoes.
 

9. Buying decisions: Rural consumers are cautious about buying anything. Decisions are made slowly and often delayed for months together. Often, they move from shop to shop inquiring about the prices of products. Moreover, men are the main decision-makers even in the case of purchase of ladies garments.

Marketing mix
Marketing mix refers to the set of actions, tactics, tools or variables that a company uses to promote and sell its brand or product in markets.
4 Ps of rural marketing are :
1. Product
2. Price
3. Place
4. Promotion
Though the marketing mix for urban and rural areas is the same, every product and promotion which was a hit in the cities may not work in rural areas.

Product : Product for the rural market should be built or modified to suit the lifestyle or needs of rural consumers. The packing should be less sophisticated and small unit packaging should be adopted. The the product should give more value to the customers at less cost.

Price: The villagers due to their limited resources are very price sensitive by nature. Hence low volume and low price of the products should be designed for the rural market. For eg., Godrej introduced three soap brands Cinthol, Fair Glow and Godrej in 50-gm packs, priced at Rs.4-5 meant specially for the rural market.

Place: A village as a place for promotion, distribution, and consumption is very different from town or city. Lack of transportation and warehousing is a big problem in such areas. Most of the retail shops in rural areas are run on a small scale with limited storage facilities.

Promotion: Promotion aspects always create a challenge in rural markets because  village has a thin population density and are widely spread over large remote areas. The promotional vehicles used are televisions, radio, print media, cinema, hoardings, etc.
Examples of the rural marketing mix are: ICICI rural ATMs are battery operated so that power failure is not an issue. BP sells smokeless biomass run stoves (Oorja) for rural markets priced attractively at Rs.675. Bank of India introduced Boomiheen credit card for providing credit card facilities to landless farmers.

Planning for the rural market
To succeed in rural marketing, firms should adopt the following strategies.
 

1. Research should be undertaken with a view to identify the actual needs and lifestyles of the rural people. Such research should be conducted on a continuous basis. Further, the market should be segmented on the basis of density of population, age, education, occupation, income, religion, and caste, etc.
 

2. Products should be designed to suit the rural consumers. The cost should be low and product size should be kept small.
 

3. The advertisement should be in the local language projecting their cultural background and ethos. Advertising media like T.V. and radio are more effective than print media. Door to door canvassing is a good strategy. Cinema is also a useful medium.
 

4. Large sales forces are to be employed to cover the widely scattered rural market. As far as possible rural people can be employed as salesmen or salesgirls after proper on the job training.
 

5. For distribution, it is better to adopt ‘Satellite distribution system’. Under this system, a stockiest is appointed at centrally located town surrounded by small villages. The stockiest is supplied goods on credit or consignment basis and he will supply to small retailers of surrounding villages. When any of such retailers grows bigger he is made stockiest and asked to create his own satellite retail points. Thus the marketer can penetrate deep into the rural market.
In short, the marketers should adopt scientific marketing management so that they can get the ultimate success in rural marketing.