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The Distant Voices – Whitepaper

Samrat Gupta 31-Dec-10

The Distant VoicesThe Distant VoicesThe Distant VoicesThe Distant Voices

Whitepaper on the potential of Rural India, in terms of

demand for urban products. The voices of rural India

asking for the brands not up-till available to them, and

how the companies react to their voices?

Author:

Samrat Gupta

Brand Consultant, Bangalore

E-mail: [email protected]

Note:

This work is for the purpose of ‘reference study material’

and should not be published in any form what so ever,without prior permission of the author.

Criticism or any kind of suggestions are welcome and need

to be communicated through e-mail only.

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]





Table of Contents:

Section Subject Page No.Sec.1 Abstract 3

Sec.2 Introduction 4

Sec.3 What is Rural 5

Sec.4 Demographic details of Rural India 6

Sec.5 Realities before the Marketers 6

Sec.6 Rural Initiators 7

Sec.7 Industry's role in building market linkages 8

Sec.8 Rural Storming – A Wave of Change 9

Sec.9 Challenges & Opportunities 13

Sec.10 Rural Trends 15

Sec.11 Research Work - Rural Branding & Promo. 16





Sec.1 Abstract

Thatched roofs, cow-dung plastered walls, farmers tilling paddy fields, all form a

backdrop for a US $ 100 million market. Enter rural India, which accounts for around 70

percent of India’s total population and 50 percent of total GDP. With rural consumption

expected to reach US$ 577 billion by 2020, this market offers a cornucopia of

opportunities for companies who venture to brave it.

Promotion of brands in rural markets requires the special measures. Due to the social

and backward condition the personal selling efforts have a challenging role to play in this

regard. The word of mouth is an important message carrier in rural areas. Infect the

opinion leaders are the most influencing part of promotion strategy of rural promotion

efforts. The experience of agricultural input industry can act as a guideline for themarketing efforts of consumer durable and non-durable companies. Relevance of Mass

Media is also a very important factor. The Indian established Industries have the

advantages, which MNC don't enjoy in this regard. The strong Indian brands have strong

brand equity, consumer demand-pull and efficient and dedicated dealer network which

have been created over a period of time. The rural market has a grip of strong country

shops, which affect the sale of various products in rural market. The companies are

trying to trigger growth in rural areas. They are identifying the fact that rural people are

now in the better position with disposable income. The low rate finance availability hasalso increased the affordability of purchasing the costly products by the rural people.

Marketer should understand the price sensitivity of a consumer in a rural area. This

paper is therefore an attempt to promote the brand image in the rural market.

In a market where life has revolved around deep rooted community values, joint families,

and social customs and taboos (women, for example, are not allowed to wear trousers),

marketers realize that the traditional routes of market entry and brand building employed

in urban India are often not feasible.

As Adi Godrej, Chairman of the Godrej Group, says,

“The challenge [for brands] is to understand the [psyche] of the rural consumer, create

better distribution, and [appreciate] the heterogeneity.”





Sec.2 Introduction

A brand is a name that distinguishes a product from others. It has its own identity in the

market with its symbol and tagline. When we talk about brands in rural markets some of

the names which come to our mind are Rajdoot Bikes, Ghari-Detergent, Dolly TV and

chic shampoo etc Findings indicated that good quality, value for money and sense of

identity with brand were likely to act as key determinants of a FMCG brand in rural India.

Better finish and good looks, recommendations from retailers were found be key

determinants of a consumer durable brand in rural India. Let’s throw some light on agro

inputs also like pesticides, fertilizers, manure, seeds, tractors, harvesters, pumps and

threshers etc. In this regards marketers are following market specialization strategy.

HYV seeds are also becoming popular among the farmers.

It is a known fact in rural areas that price plays an important role in rural markets for

purchasing the products. Now the New Era of marketing is changing the scenario of the

Rural India. With Cola companies penetrating these markets with low prices (chota coke)

the rural consumer has now realized the benefits of branding. However, no data is

available to establish a relationship of the extent of branding and the consumer

acceptance with reference to research publications. Keeping this in view, the present

study was undertaken and the results have been presented.

Indian Marketers on rural marketing have two understanding

1. The urban metro products and marketing products can be implemented in rural

markets with some or no change.

2. The rural marketing required the separate skills and techniques from its urban

counter part.

The Marketers have following facilities to make them believe in accepting the truth that

rural markets are different in so many terms.

1. The rural market has the opportunity for.

2. Low priced products can be more successful in rural markets because the low

purchasing, purchasing powers in rural markets.

http://www.articlealley.com/






3. Rural consumers have mostly homogeneous group with similar needs, economic

conditions and problems.

4. The rural markets can be worked with the different media environment as

opposed to press, film, radio and other urban centric media exposure.

How reality does affect the planning of marketers? Do villagers have same attitude like

urban consumers? The question arises for the management of rural marketing effects in

a significant manner so than companies can enter in the rural market with the definite

goals and targets but not for a short term period but for longer duration. The Research

paper will discuss the role of regard. The strategy, which will be presented in the paper,

can be either specific or universally applicable.

Sec.3 What is Rural?

According to the census of India village with clear surveyed boundaries not having a

municipality, corporation or board, with density of population not more than 400sq.km

and with at least 75 per cent of the male working population engaged in agriculture and

allied activities would quality as rural. According to this definition, there are 6.38,000

villages in the country. Of these, only 0.5 cent has a population above 10,000 and 2 per

cent have population between 5,000 and 10,000. Around 50 per cent has a population

less than 200.

Interestingly, for FMCG and consumer durable companies, any territory that has more

than 20,000 and 50,000 population, respectively, is rural market. So, for them, it is not

rural India which is rural. According to them, it is the class-II and III towns that are rural.

According to the census of India 2001, there are more than 4,000 towns in the country. It

has classified them into six categories-around 400 class-I towns with one lakh and

above population (these are further classified into 35 metros and rest non-metros), 498

class-II towns with 50,000-99,999 population, 1,368 class-III towns with 20,000-50,000

population, 1,560 class-IV towns with 10,000-19,999 population. It is mainly the class-II

and III towns that marketer's term as rural and that partly explains their enthusiasm

about the so-called "immense potential" of rural India.





Sec.4 Demographic details of Indian Rural Markets

• About 285 million live in urban India whereas 742 million reside in rural areas,

constituting 72% of India's population resides in its 6, 27,000 villages.

• The number of middle income and high income households in rural Indian is

expected to grow from 46 million to 59 million.

• Size of rural market is estimated to be 42 million households and rural market

has been growing at five times the pace of the urban market.

• More government rural development initiates.

• Low literacy rate

• Increasing agricultural productivity leading to growth of rural disposable income.

• Lowering of difference between taste of urban and rural customers.

Sec.5 Realities before the Marketers

70% of India's population lives in 627000 villages in rural areas. 90% of the rural

population is concentrated in villages with a population of less than 2000, with

agriculture being the main business. This simply shows the great potentiality rural India

has to bring the much - needed volume- driven growth. This brings a boon in disguise for

the FMCG Company who has already reached the plateau of their business urban India.

As per the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) study, there are

as many 'middle income and above' households in the rural areas as there are in the

urban areas. There are almost twice as many' lower middle income' households in rural

areas as in the urban areas. At the highest income level there are 2.3 million urban

households as against 1.6 million households in rural areas. According to the NCAER

projections, the number of middle and high-income households in rural India is expected

to grow from 80 million to 111 million by 2007. In urban India, the same is expected to

grow from 46 million to 59 million. Thus, the absolute size India is expected to be

doubles that of urban India.





precise. This is where the fortunes of many of Indian biggest corporations are likely to be

shaped. To expand the market by tapping the countryside, more and more MNC`s are

foregoing into rural markets. Among those that have made some headway are HLL,

Coca-cola, LG Electronics, Britannia, Standard life, Philips, Colgate Palmolive, ITC and

the foreign-invested telecom companies. Gone are the days when a rural consumer

went to a nearby city to but branded Products and services`. Time was when only a

select household consumed branded goods, be it tea (or) jeans. There were days when

big companies flocked to rural markets to establish their brands. Today, rural markets

are critical for every marketer-be it for a branded shampoo (or) an automobile. Time was

when marketers thought van campaigns, cinema commercials and a few wall paintings

would suffice to entice rural folks under their folds. Thanks to television, today a

customer in a rural area is quite literate about myriad products that are on offer in the

market place. An Indian farmer going through his daily chores wearing jeans may sound

idiotic. Not for Arvind Mills, though. When it launched the Ruf & Tuf kits, it had created

quite a sensation among the rural folks as well within few months of their launch.

Sec.7 Industry's role in building market linkages

To make an effective market linkage, industries have to play as an engine of market,which can generate a brand image of the rural products. This initiative of industries will

also strengthen the backward and forward linkages of the rural market, besides,

accelerating the innovations of the rural products. Definitely, this strategy will also give a

remarkable dividend to the industries & profit making companies. In micro level, it is

observed that to create a sustainable market linkage for rural products, industries can

develop an ecosystem of Self Help Groups (SHGs) by involving the local communities

through village level empowerment. It is nothing less than the next phase in the

democratization of commerce. Under this paradigm, industries can create a network withviable marketing channels covering all the linkages from villages to the global level. This

architecture provides the right value of procurement through the village procurement

centers and rural entrepreneurs can sell their products faster with better price realization.

This model is also capable of generating a consumer business and an output business

in a win-win scenario, where rural producers can get a wide marketing horizon and the





industries shall get a new, lower cost sales-force. Another role of industries in building

market linkages for agro-based rural products can be the dynamic contract farming'. If a

conventional industry can kick off a contract farming business, and export niche

horticulture crops like cucumbers, the small and marginal farmers who could grow these

small cucumbers would make Rs.30,000 in profits in a year. KRBL, one of India's largest

basmati exporters, has contract farming agreements with 24,000 farmers; Global Green

buys from about 12,000 farmers. Moreover, in the current era of information technology,

industry and private companies can also creatively use ICT for building sustainable

marketing linkages. This approach creatively leverages information technology (IT) to set

up a meta-market in favour of small and poor producers/rural entrepreneurs, who would

otherwise continue to operate and transact in 'un-evolved' markets where the rent-

seeking vested interests exploit their disadvantaged position. ITC eChoupal is the best

example in this context. Through creative use of Information Technology, ITC eChoupal

has been creating sustainable stakeholder value by reorganizing the agri-commodity

supply chains simultaneously improving the competitiveness of small farmer agriculture

and enhancing rural prosperity. eChoupal also sidesteps the value-sapping problems

caused by fragmentation, dispersion, heterogeneity and weak infrastructure. ITC takes

on the role of a Network Orchestrator in this meta-market by stitching together an end-

to-end solution. It eliminated the traditional 'mandi' system which involved lot of

middlemen as a result of which farmers failed to get the right value for their produce. The

solution simultaneously addresses the viability concerns of the participating companiesby virtually aggregating the demand from thousands of small farmers, and the value-for-

money concerns of the farmers by creating competition among the companies in each

leg of the value chain.

Sec.8 Rural Storming – A wave of change

In recent times, rural India has witnessed a wave of change. Dinesh Malhotra, general

manager of Linterland (rural arm of Lintas), points out, “With media exposure and

increasing literacy levels, people in rural India are now demanding a better lifestyle.” The

educated “rural yuppie” (males in the 15-34 age group) is moving out to work in nearby

towns and cities, and sending money home to his family. This has created an indirect

















increase in disposable incomes and a surge in demand for consumer goods. The rural

youth are slowly evolving as “opinion leaders” in influencing brand and product decisions

in a market that was swayed by village elders for centuries.

When building a brand in rural India, word-of-mouth is a huge motivator. Focused brand-

building initiatives—like participation at community events such as “melas” (village fairs),

“haats” (markets), street theater, van campaigns, and puppet shows—generate positive

word-of-mouth and influence buying decisions.

Cholayil Ltd., a purveyor of the herbal soap “Medimix,” campaigned in mobile vans to

promote its brand. “We run a van campaign which visits the interior villages where there

are no distributors. We halt the van at specific points [where village folks congregate and

watch videos shown on these vans] and give out product samples.” However, contrary to

claims of Medimix’s success, Malhotra believes that “van campaigns can be very

expensive. [Alternatively, promoting one’s brand] in large congregation points like village

markets and fairs has a far wider reach, and is more cost effective.”

Direct media promotions have helped build knowledge of product categories and change

long-entrenched living habits. Colgate-Palmolive, a leading oral hygiene product

manufacturer, entered the rural market at a time when “Neem” twigs (the Neem tree has

herbal properties) and non-dentifrice products like ash, charcoal, or salt were the normfor brushing teeth (in fact in some rural pockets, this tradition still continues). In 2001,

Colgate-Palmolive launched “Operation Jagruti” to educate villagers about oral hygiene

and its benefits vis-à-vis traditional products like “Neem.” Through product trials and free

samples, the company was able to generate awareness in this new market. On a similar

note, CK Ranganathan, managing director of Cavin Kare, notes, “When we entered the

rural areas in South India, people used to wash their hair with soap. When we launched

the ‘Chik’ brand of shampoo we educated the people on how to use it through live ‘touch

and feel’ demonstrations and also distributed free sachets at fairs. This strategy workedwonders in the rural areas of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh—two important states in

India.”

Colgate and Cavin Kare have shown that communication is key when it comes to

building brands in rural markets. As R. V. Rajan, managing director of the Anugrah





Advertising Agency, adds, “To communicate effectively, it is important to understand the

fears, aspirations, and hopes of the rural consumer.” Not to mention the traditions and

stereotypes that have governed their lives for centuries.

While communicating the brand message, marketers must realize that language plays a

prime role. Though a large part of urban India is well versed in English (thanks to the

British and modern television), in rural India, heritage plays a powerful role and regional

languages are predominant. There are 15 regional languages, and 1600 dialects in

India, and as one moves into the countryside, English is replaced with regional tongues.

V. S. Sitaram, Dabur India executive director, explains, “Often people treat India as one

big market, but the reality is that India is more like the European Union—a mix of

different cultures, habits and languages.” Dabur is also considering the use of South

Indian celebrities to propagate the brand message in South India. Marketing companies

not only need to customize their communication, but in some cases they must also

change their product names to match regional differences. Take toothpaste, for

example: “Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan” (red toothpowder in Hindi) was rechristened as

“Dabur Sivappu Pal Podi” (red toothpowder in Tamil, the local language) for the South

Indian market.

Affordability of the product is also a critical success factor when building brands. A

spokesperson from Tata Group, which retails the Sonata brand of watches to rural India,says, “[rural folks] think of a purchase in terms of how it serves their needs and how well

its suits the family, rather than the individual.” Products must be affordable and

immensely practical. Furthermore, since the rural consumer often survives on daily

wages, he engages in daily purchases. Several companies like Cavin Kare, Godrej, and

Dabur adopted the “single use” sachet strategy, which has worked in their favor. As

Byas Anand, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications, Dabur India, claims, “We

introduced one-rupee sachets (2.5 cents) for Dabur Vatika shampoo which resulted in

doubling of volumes in the rural market.”

Though pricing is important, rural consumers favor quality as well. For rural consumers,

a purchase is a bigger investment than it is for the urban, veteran consumer. Hence, a

particular brand will be rewarded only if it earns the rural consumer’s trust through

consistent product quality. As R.V. Rajan says, “the rural consumer is conscious of value





for money, and it might be difficult to convert him to a new brand. However, once

converted he is fiercely loyal to the brand.” This issue will be a challenging one for

corporations when they strategize their brand entry and decide how to balance pricing

with brand quality.

The challenge doesn’t end with just building brand awareness. While television and

direct marketing activities help rural consumers learn about different brands, ensuring

product availability is even more critical. Marketers in rural India claim that setting up a

supply chain that reaches the remotest rural areas is extremely arduous given the

infrastructure in the country. According to Harish Manwani, chairman of Hindustan

Unilever Limited (HUL), “The rural market [centers] are scattered over large areas and

[their] connectivity to the urban centers is poor.” To overcome the distribution challenge

and increase penetration in rural hinterlands, HUL launched a unique operation called

Project Shakti in 2001 (“Shakti” is a Hindi word which means “strength”). The project

targeted rural women from existing self-help groups to work as “direct-to-home”

distributors for HUL products, and helped the company break into a market they were

unfamiliar with.

Malhotra (Linterland) believes that, “While Project Shakti might have worked for HUL, it

is not an established channel.” Reasons like relatively high capital investment, gender

roles, and taboos could present an upper limit to those sales numbers. According toMalhotra, a “hub and spoke” model of distribution is the “future.” As he explains, “We

successfully adopted the hub and spoke model for Dabur India and it has worked very

well. Here, feeder towns, primarily on the highways serve as hubs, where companies

can rent a warehouse and stock their products. [Spokes are comprised of] ‘cyclist

salesmen’ [who] then distribute products to small retail outlets in nearby rural pockets.”

In short, customized and affordable products, effective distribution, and focused

marketing initiatives are essential factors in building credibility for a brand in rural India.Brand awareness and trust will play a key role in combating the blitz of local copycat

brands that are formidable competition. If marketers tailor make their brand building

initiatives according to the dynamics of the rural market, it may no longer come as a

surprise to see the rural Indian consumer sitting before a Samsung television, enjoying a

bag of Frito-Lay potato chips, and drinking a bottle of Coke.

http://www.hllshakti.com/sbcms/temp15.asp

http://www.hllshakti.com/sbcms/temp15.asp





Sec.9 Challenges and Opportunities

The Indian rural market with its vast size and demand base offers great opportunities to

marketers. Two-thirds of countries consumers live in rural areas and almost half of the

national income is generated here. It is only natural that rural markets form an important

part of the total market of India. Our nation is classified in around 450 districts, and

approximately 630000 villages which can be sorted in different parameters such as

literacy levels, accessibility, income levels, penetration, distances from nearest towns,

etc.

The success of a brand in the Indian rural market is as unpredictable as rain. It has

always been difficult to gauge the rural market. Many brands, which should have been

successful, have failed miserably. More often than not, people attribute rural market

success to luck. Therefore, marketers need to understand the social dynamics and

attitude variations within each village though nationally it follows a consistent pattern.

While the rural market certainly offers a big attraction to marketers, it would be naive to

think that any company can easily enter the market and walk away with sizable share.

Actually the market bristles with variety of problems. The main problems in rural

marketing are:

• Physical Distribution

• Channel Management

• Promotion and Marketing Communication

The problems of physical distribution and channel management adversely affect the

service as well as the cost aspect. The existent market structure consists of primary rural

market and retail sales outlet. The structure involves stock points in feeder towns to

service these retail outlets at the village levels. But it becomes difficult maintaining the

required service level in the delivery of the product at retail level.

One of the ways could be using company delivery vans which can serve two purposes- it

can take the products to the customers in every nook and corner of the market and it

also enables the firm to establish direct contact with them and thereby facilitate sales

promotion. However, only the bigwigs can adopt this channel. The companies with





relatively fewer resources can go in for syndicated distribution where a tie-up between

non-competitive marketers can be established to facilitate distribution.

As a general rule, rural marketing involves more intensive personal selling efforts

compared to urban marketing. Marketers need to understand the psyche of the rural

consumers and then act accordingly. To effectively tap the rural market a brand must

associate it with the same things the rural folks do. This can be done by utilizing the

various rural folk media to reach them in their own language and in large numbers so

that the brand can be associated with the myriad rituals, celebrations, festivals, melas

and other activities where they assemble.

One very fine example can be quoted of Escorts where they focused on deeper

penetration .In September-98 they established rural marketing sales. They did not rely

on T.V or press advertisements rather concentrated on focused approach depending on

geographical and market parameters like fares, melas etc. Looking at the 'kuchha' roads

of village they positioned their mobike as tough vehicle. Their advertisements showed

Dharmendra riding Escort with the punchline 'Jandar Sawari, Shandar Sawari'. Thus,

they achieved whopping sales of 95000 vehicles annually.

One more example, which can be quoted in this regard, is of HLL. A year back HUL

started 'Operation Bharat' to tap the rural markets. Under this operation it passed outlow–priced sample packets of its toothpaste, fairness cream, Clinic plus shampoo, and

Ponds cream to twenty million households. Thus looking at the challenges and the

opportunities which rural markets offer to the marketers it can be said that the future is

very promising for those who can understand the dynamics of rural markets and exploit

them to their best advantage.

The basic scope of this novel initiative will be the mutual benefits of the rural

entrepreneurs and industries. The entrepreneurs - primary beneficiaries, SHGs - bridgewith the community, participating companies/industries and rural consumers have

befitted through a robust commercial relationship. These models of marketing linkages

demonstrate a large corporation which can play a major role in reorganizing markets and

increasing the efficiency of a rural product generation system. While doing so it will

benefit farmers and rural communities as well as shareholders. Moreover, the key role of





information technology provided and maintained by the industry/company for building

linkages, and used by local farmers brings about transparency, increased access to

information, and rural transformation. Besides, this strategy of market linkage, addresses

the challenges faced by rural entrepreneurs due to institution voids, numerous

intermediaries and infrastructure bottlenecks. Moreover, the prime scope of this model is

the creation of opportunities for the rural entrepreneurs for product differentiation and

innovation by offering them choices. Because of this sustainable market linkages, rural

producers can participate in the benefits of globalization and will also develop their

capacity to maintain global quality standard. Nonetheless, it creates new stakeholders

for the industry sector . And subsequently, they become part of the firms' core

businesses. The involvement of the private /industry sector at the rural product and

market development can also provide opportunities for the development of new services

and values to the customers, which will find application in the developed markets. It will

be worth mentioning that building a sustainable market linkage through industry's

intervention will also empower the rural mass (producers, farmers & entrepreneurs) to

cope with socio-economic problems in the rural society and will ensure economic self -

reliance.

Sec.10 Rural Trends in India

Tends indicates that the rural the rural markets are coming up in a way and growing

twice as fast as the urban, witnessing a rise in sales of hitherto typical urban kitchen

gadgets such as refrigerators, mixer-grinders and pressure cookers. According to a

National Council for Applied Economics Research (NCAER), study, there are as many

'middle income and above' households in the rural areas as there are in the urban areas.

There are almost twice as many 'low middle income' households in rural areas as in the

urban areas. At the highest income level there are 2.3 million urban households as

against 1.6 million households in rural areas. According to Mr.D.Shiva Kumar, Business

Head (Hair), personal products division, Hindustan Lever Limited, the money available to

spend on FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) products by urban India is Rs.49,500

crores as against is Rs.63,500 crores in rural India.








As per NCAER projections, the number of middle and high-income households in rural

India is expected to grow from 80 million to 111 million by 2007. In Urban India, the

same is expected to grow from 46 million to 59 million. Thus, the absolute size of rural

India is expected to be double that of urban India. Rural income levels are largely

determined by the vagaries of monsoon and, hence, the demand there is not an easy

horse to ride on. Apart from increasing the geographical width of their product

distribution, the focus of corporate should be on the introduction of brands and develop

strategies specific to rural consumers. Britannia industries launched Tiger Biscuits

especially for the rural market. An important tool to reach out to the rural audience is

through effective communication. A rural consumer is brand loyal and understands

symbols better. This also makes it easy to sell look-alike. The rural audience has

matured enough to understand the communication developed for the urban markets,

especially with reference to FMCG products. Television has been a major effective

communication system for rural mass and, as a result, companies should identify

themselves with their advertisements. Advertisements touching the emotions of the rural

folks, it is argued, could drive a quantum jump in sales.

Sec.11 Research Work on Rural Branding & Promotion

Objectives

The research paper consists of following objectives:

1. To analyze the present promotion strategy of few brands in rural markets.

2. To measure the success of rural marketing campaign of few brands in Terms of

consumer appreciation.

3. To study the determinants of specification factors, that can decide the success

the rural promotion strategy.

4. To evaluate the effects of adopting the specific brand ambassadors in the rural

marketing context.

5. To present suffocate on above-mentioned objectives.

The Gram Panchayat areas have been selected on random basis from the list of

available Gram Panchayat. The four-Gram Panchayat have been short-listed and 60

respondents have been selected in each Gram Panchayat so the total sample size N =





240. The respondents were organized in a group and asked about their views on

following advertisement actions and theme.

1. In case of Coca-Cola how does the role of Aamir Khan affect the rural

consumers?

2. In case of BPL Television how does Amitabh Bachchan give the impression

about BPL Brand.

3. How does the advertisement of Asian Paints with the Slogan "Sunil Babu"

influence the rural consumers

The research design applied for this purpose is experimental with descriptive. The

experimental design was suitable as the rural consumers fell interest about it and

descriptive design depends on the explanation past about the campaign of these

Brands.

Conceptual Framework

Given the Literacy scenario in to consideration the promotion of Brands in rural markets

requires the special measures. Due to the social and backward condition the personal

selling efforts have a challenging role to play in this regard. The word of mouth is an

important message carrier in rural areas. Infect the opinion leaders are the most

influencing part of promotion strategy of rural promotion efforts. The experience of agricultural input industry can act as a guideline for the marketing efforts of consumer

durable and non-durable companies. Relevance of Mass Media is also a very important

factor. Door-Darshan had already acquired high penetration in rural households. Now

the cable and other Channels have also penetrated in rural households. The

newspapers and other printed Media are also gaining strategy but their role is still

secondary in this regard.

Results and Discussions

The field exercise has given the various inputs about the rural consumers. This

experience was unique from a marketer's point of view that the companies must have a

proper understanding of rural marketing environment at a region wise basis. The data

has tabulated in following manner. Advertisement of Coca-Cola (Acceptability pattern)





Contents Favor Non-favor No comments

Language & Content Ad 72% 20% 8%

Background Effect on Ad. 50% 20% 30%

Expression and Communication Style

of Aamir Khan

85% 15% -

The Ad plays an important role for giving boost to rural consumers feeling. The feeling

plays very important role. The Language and content (72%) and expression style of

Aamir Khan (85%) play significant role

For BPL Advertisement – below are the statistics;


Amitabh Bachhan as brand Ambassador 75% 20% 5%

Action Style of Amitabh Bachhan 65% 30% 5%

The Language of the Ad. 62% 20% 18%

Amitabh Bachchan is a leading player in the ad feature. The Action style of Amitabh

Bachchan is a very delighted factor for rural Consumers.


Style of Presentation 77% 20% 3%

Concept of Ad. 65% 20% 15%

Interesting & Delightful Ad. 63% 17% 20%

Style of presentation plays an important role. 77% is a high figure as this affects the

whole creativity aspect of any ad. The total concept and delight fulness is a strong factor

for this ad.

Following are the different Modes of Promotions in rural market;

Models Favor Non-favor No comments

Haats 65% 30% 5%




S t G t P 19 31 D 10

Wall Paintings 40% 53% 7%

Melas 65% 20% 15%

Haats and Melas play a very important role in this regard. The 65% response in favor of

this is an indicator of this.

Suggestions:

1. Rural consumer environment must be understood before the creation of ad.

2. Rural mindset accepts the brands easily, which are close to their culture. This

point must be reflected in ad for rural markets.

3. Sponsorships to the Melas and Hats must be considered in a significant manner.

4. Selection of brand ambassadors, lyrics must not be ignored in this regard. They

have a special liking for folk culture so this can be taken in an effective utilization

of brand promotions.

Conclusions:

1. The Language and content must be according to the suitability of rural

environment.

2. Background figures are also a deterministic factor.

3. Admissibility of brand ambassadors plays an important role in this regard.

4. Special promotion measures are the strong applicable factors in this regard.

References:

1. Rural Marketing- A World of Opportunity – The Hindu, October 11 2009

2. ICFAI Marketing Mastermind, February 2007

3. Rural Marketing, Pradeep Kashyap, Biztantra publications 2006

4. NCAER Report

5. Rural Sales Drive Growth – Business Standard, April 12 2004

Report Samrat

Documents

Transcript of Report Samrat