Rural marketing presents interesting challenge to a marketer. Different social, cultural and psychological aspects present new challenges in Rural Marketing. I would like to segment these aspects into 4 areas, this would help to characterize the rural marketing and tackle the issue in the focused manner.
Rural marketing presents interesting challenge to a marketer. Different social, cultural and psychological aspects present new challenges in Rural Marketing. I would like to segment these aspects into 4 areas, this would help to characterize the rural marketing and tackle the issue in the focused manner.
1. Awareness : A rural marketer can easily leverage the local religious melas, weekly village haats or panchayat meetings to create the awareness of products or services. TV particularly national TV is also a good medium. The word of mouth publicity is also used many times, using village head or influential person in village to talk benefits of the products or services is certainly good idea.
2. Psychological, cultural and social and political barriers: One of the most important aspect of Rural marketing. The deep rooted psychological, cultural and social systems are difficult to be changed, marketing programs should be aligned taking care of aspects like social practices like caste systems, religious practices etc. One of the good example is ITC choupal program, in these programs ITC has taken care very well of existing political system and power equations in small villages. The shared kitchen programs of Indian National oil companies also are some examples of this aspect. The training programs if geared for the use of technology in the traditional services are very well accepted by the youths and the parents as well. This helps to make the rural economy more effective and increase the productivity of local economy.
3. Affordability : Another important aspect of rural marketing, affordability is an important factor in rural marketing. Ties up with banks, micro finance institutions or taking advantage government schemes is very important as rural masses have issues in finance. The rural economy runs mostly on agricultural produce which being cyclic present new challenges. Also losses arising out of non-payments for failure of crops, drought or floods affect the marketing programs. Building suitable financial programs taking care of these aspects is important in rural marketing
4. Availability : Making the services and products available all the time in required quantity is a challenge as the forecasting is tough and supply chain elements are non-existent. Using the local resources to fulfill the requirement is best option but it may not be available all the time. A program such as train the trainer where trained youths provide the training is good option for providing employment to the trained resource and bring more youths under training programs
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