ITC : e Choupal : Rural Marketing : Marketing Strategy

INTRODUCTION
In recent years, rural markets of India have acquired significance, as the overall growth of the Indian 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 marketing has emerged. But 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.

WHAT MAKES RURAL INDIA ATTRACTIVE?
It is an upcoming market and the following facts substantiate this-
 800 million people
 Estimated annual size of the rural market
• FMCG Rs 65,000 Crore
• Durables Rs 5,000 Crore
• Agri-inputs (incl. tractors) Rs 45,000 Crore
• 2 / 4 wheeler vehicles Rs 8,000 Crore
 In 2001-02, LIC sold 55 % of its policies in rural India.
 Of two million BSNL mobile connections, 50% are in small towns/villages.
 Of the six lakh villages, 5.22 lakh have a Village Public Telephone (VPT)
 41 million Kisan Credit Cards issued (against 22 million credit-plus-debit cards in urban) with cumulative credit of Rs 977 billion resulting in tremendous liquidity.
 42 million rural households are availing banking services in comparison to 27 million urban households.
 Investment in formal savings instruments: 6.6 million households in rural and 6.7 million in urban India.
 Nano-Marketing or sachets worked well in rural India and there is ample scope for the products to be accepted by consumers if the price is competitive.

MARKETING STRATEGIES TO CAPTURE RURAL INDIA

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