Answer to Question #277083 in Marketing for Garima

Question

What are the positioning strategies that companies should follow to target the desired customer groups in rural India

Answer 1

The strategy for rural marketing has to be basically different from that for the urban market because of two very important reasons. In the first place, since the urban people are concentrated, it is physically easier to contact them. On the contrary, people in villages are scattered, so that the task of contacting them is several degrees more demanding and challenging. Secondly, the methods of communicating with the villagers have to be of a different order in view of their lower levels of education and the environmental difference.

In the Indian context, rural marketing is a complex subject. For a business organization, rural marketing is beset with a number of problems. The prices of rural marketing pose many problems due to the vastness of the country and a high potentiality for providing an effective marketing system. Besides, a few other problems stem from the under-developed markets, and illiterate and gullible people constitute the major segment of the markets. More purchasing power is not enough. It is not enough to have some consumption pioneers. The activation of buying on a wide scale is an essential pre-condition for the exploitation of the rural market.

Decentralizing rural markets by detaching them from the urban bases. A give-and-take two-way approach should replace the present one-way exploitation. The salesman in rural markets should be selected from the educated unemployed villagers, trained well and appointed as salesmen. The town-to-villages shuttling salesmen are to be replaced by a stationary salesman in villages.

Companies should also adequately concentrate on educating the villagers to save them from spurious goods and services.

Rural markets are laggards in picking up new products. This will help the companies to phase their marketing efforts. This will also help to sell inventories of products outdated in urban markets.

Further, companies can learn to concentrate on low-volume products, brand building and relationship marketing, Investing in Staff-training, utilizing excess manufacturing capacity for contract manufacturing, and concentrating on rural markets.