|
There are several factors that
affect a person's decision to
purchase a brand or a product. Though many times
these factors are not visible, yet they influence and impact the sales of
a product or brand to a large extent. Factors like demographics,
events in the life of the consumer and cultural, social and
situational environment together affect the psyche of the consumer at
any given point of time. Persuasion also forms a very subtle, but
important, aspect of these influencing factors. But from the marketing point
of view, the structure of the market is an important factor to
be considered which affects the buying behavior of consumers,
because India has dual set of markets, namely rural and urban. But
many do not agree with this view, as they emphasize that consumer
anywhere is a consumer, and hence their needs, aspirations, beliefs and attitudes
will be the same. The fact, however, remains that there are
unique characteristic features which call for different marketing strategies
to be specifically designed and developed to suit the unique
buying behavior of rural and urban consumers.
In recent times, rural markets have acquired great significance
in countries like India and China, as the overall growth of
these economies has resulted in a substantial increase in
the purchasing power of the rural communities. The rural areas
are huge consumers of industrially manufactured products. As a
result, a special marketing strategy called rural marketing has taken
shape. Sometimes, rural marketing is confused with
agricultural marketing. While agricultural marketing is the marketing
of products of the rural areas to the urban consumers or
industrial consumers, rural marketing, on the other hand, involves
delivering manufactured or processed inputs or services from the urban
producers to rural consumers.
Therefore, marketers need to understand the social dynamics
and attitude variations, not only between urban and rural
consumers, but also between consumers of different villages. The focal point
in rural marketing is the need to understand the psyche of the
rural consumers and then act accordingly. Rural marketing,
as compared to urban marketing, revolves around
persuasive communication and intensive personal selling efforts, because
the biggest challenge is to convince the consumer
and instill in him the need to buy a product. According
to George Kovoor, Executive Vice-President, Traditional
Trade, Pepsi Foods Ltd., "The issue in the rural markets
is not the spending power. In fact, most rural consumers have the
spending power, but they have to be given a tangible reason to buy a soft
drink when they have other options such as water or a homemade sharbet to quench their thirst." |
