What is rural marketing pdf

Other methods like distribution of pamphlets, use of mobile publicity vans and advertising on walls can also assist in establishing a relationship with the rural masses. Examples o Asian Paints selected some opinion leaders in the villages and painted their houses to demonstrate that the colour does not come off.

It also educated the rural people by advertising through mobile vans. The Government of India utilized this medium for selling seeds and fertilizers. They have customized promotional strategies for rural markets using local language and talent. Coca-Cola's Parivartan program has trained more than 6, retailers to display and stock products.

Dabur has created a training module ASTRA Advanced sales training for retail ascendance in several regional languages. A number of auto companies have launched rural-specific campaigns. They have also been formulating and implementing schemes for employment generation. These efforts have re- sulted in making India's rural economy comparatively more vibrant and prosperous.

Secondary literature is drawn from proprietary sources available on various websites. The other sources include research papers published in online and printed journals, news agencies, blogs, etc. The literature sourced has further been edited and categorised to make it suitable to study the considered objective.

This exploratory research investigates the various initiatives taken by Hindustan Unilever Limited to reach the rural consumer. Hindustan Lever Limited has a distribution network which is one of their key strengths that helps them reach their products across the length and breadth of our vast country. This includes, maintaining favourable trade relations, providing innovative incentives to retailers and organizing demand generation activities among a host of other things.

Therefore, over the decades, Hindustan Lever has progressively strengthened its distribution reach in rural India, which today has about 33 lac outlets.

Direct rural distribution in Hindustan Lever began with the coverage of villages adjacent to small towns. The company's stockists in these towns were made to use their infrastructure to distribute products to outlets in these villages. Large retailers also placed direct orders, which comprised almost 30 per cent of the total orders collected.

The company salesman grouped all these orders and placed an indent with the Head Office. Goods were sent to these markets, with the company salesman as the consignee. The salesman then collected and distributed the products to the respective wholesalers, against cash payment, and the money was remitted to the company.

The focus of the second phase, which spanned the decades of the 40s, was to provide desired products and quality service to the company's customers. In order to achieve this, one wholesaler in each market was appointed as a "Registered Wholesaler," a stock point for the company's products in that market.

The company salesman still covered the market, canvassing for orders from the rest of the trade. He would then distribute stocks from the Registered Wholesaler through distribution units maintained by the company. The Registered Wholesaler system, therefore, increased the distribution reach of the company to a larger number of customers. The RS was required to provide the distribution units to the company salesman. The RS financed his stocks and provided warehousing facilities to store them.

The RS also undertook demand stimulation activities on behalf of the company. HUL soon realized that the RS would be able to provide customer service only if he was serviced well. This knowledge led to the establishment of the "Company Depots" system. This system helped in trans-shipment, bulk breaking, and provided a stock point to minimize stock-outs at the RS level. The most important benefit has been improved customer service to the RS. The role performed by the Redistribution Stockists has also undergone changes over the years.

Financing stocks, providing manpower, providing service to retailers, implementing promotional activities, extending indirect coverage, reporting sales and stock data, screening for transit damages are some of the functions performed by the RS today.

In the process, the number of factories and the number of SKUs too have increased. Each of them has a minimum number of JIT depots attached for stock requirements. All brands and packs required for the set of markets which the MD and JITs service in a given area are sent to the mother depot by all manufacturing units.

At present, HUL's products, manufactured across the country, are distributed through a network of about 7, Redistribution Stockists covering about one million retail outlets.

The distribution network directly covers the entire rural population. In addition to the ongoing commitment to the traditional grocery trade, HUL is building a special relationship with the small but fast emerging modern trade. Its scale enables HUL to provide superior customer service including daily servicing, improving their range availability whilst reducing inventories.

HUL is using the opportunity of interfacing more directly with its consumers in this retail environment through specially designed communication and promotions. This is building traffic into the stores while yielding high growth. An IT-powered system has been implemented to supply stocks to redistribution stockists on a continuous replenishment basis. For this, stockists have been connected with the company through an Internet-based network, called RS Net, for online interaction on orders, despatches, information sharing and monitoring.

Today, the sales system gets to know every day what HUL stockists have sold to almost a million outlets across the country. RS Net is part of Project Leap, HUL's end-to-end supply chain, which also includes a back-end system connecting suppliers, all company sites and stretching right upto stockists. RS Net has come as a force multiplier for HUL Way, the company's action-plan to maximise the number of outlets reached and to achieve leadership in every outlet, by unshackling the field force to solely focus on secondary sales from the stockists to retailers and market activation.

HUL Way has also led to implementing best practices in customer management and common norms and processes across the company. Powered by the IT tools it has further improved customer service, while ensuring superior availability and impactful visibility at retail points. Under this approach company vans were replaced by vans belonging to Redistribution Stockists, which serviced a select group of neighbouring markets.

Rural areas with lower business potential but accessible were assigned to retail stockist accessing all villages on fortnightly basis. It was also not always feasible for the Redistribution Stockist to cover all these markets due to high costs involved. Yet, these markets were important since growth opportunities were high. Operation Harvest endeavoured to supplement the role of conventional media in rural India and, in the process, forge relationships and loyalty with rural consumers.

Operation Harvest also involved conducting of product awareness programmes on vans. Cinema Van Operations had films and audio cassettes with song and dance sequences from popular films along with also comprising of advertisements of HUL products. The rural marketing involves two primary elements; one is rural and second is urban. The exchange of goods between these two markets can be understood in the following ways:. The rural market can be understood as the selling and distribution or exchange of goods in the village or remote areas.

The following characteristics will help us to understand the rural market better:. Low Standard of Living : The village lifestyle is quite conservative and straightforward. People here spend more on necessities instead of luxury goods, making it very different from that of city life.

Large and Scattered Market : A significant percentage of the population resides in villages. There are numerous villages located throughout the country, with a small group of people living in each of them. Thus, the rural market is spread over a vast area.

Traditional Outlook : The village population tend to stick to their traditions and are resistant to change due to low literacy level. However, the rural youth is initiating development though at a slower pace.

Agriculture is Major Source of Income : The village population is highly dependant upon the agricultural income for their living. In the case of crop failure, the rural people have low disposable income. Development of Infrastructure : The rural areas lack proper infrastructure facilities such as appropriate transportation, cemented roads, communication network, banks, warehouses, etc.

Diverse Socio-Economic Background : Since the fertility of the land is uncertain and covers a large geographical rural area, there is a social-economic diversity in the people of these areas.

Seasonal Demand : The seasons and stages of agriculture, influence the demand for goods and services in rural markets. Hence they have two major seasons, namely kharif and ragi. Prevalence of Spurious Brands : In rural areas, people are more price-conscious and illiterate.

Due to this, several fake brands penetrate these markets with cheap products that look similar to the original ones. Low Literacy Level : The percentage of illiteracy is quite high in remote areas.

Thus, disconnecting them with the print media and therefore, the marketers use another medium such as radio, roadshows and nukkad dramas for rural marketing. A consumer in a village area has a low standard of living because of low literacy, low per capita income, social backwardness and low savings.

The rural consumer values old customs and traditions. They do not prefer changes. Gradually, the rural population is changing its demand pattern, and there is demand for branded products in villages. The urban products cannot be dumped on rural population; separate sets of products are designed for rural consumers to suit the rural demands.

The marketing mix elements are to be adjusted according to the requirements of the rural consumers. Here the scope of rural marketing. Average income level has unproved due to modern farming practices, contract farming industrialization, migration to urban areas etc.

Saving habits in rural people also has increased. This too contributes in higher purchasing power. There is a growth in purchasing power of rural consumers. But, the average per capita house hold expenditure is still low compared to urban spending. Life style of rural consumer changed considerably.

There has been increase in demand for durables and non-durables like table fans, radios, mopeds, soaps, etc. This provides a ready market for the producers. Rural market is expanding day after day. The growth rate of fast moving consumer goods [FMCG] market and durable market is high in rural areas. The products which have attained the maturity stage in urban market is still in growth stage in rural market. Women in rural areas are beginning to make fast decisions for purchases.

Studies reveal that With education and mass media, role of children in decision-making is also changing. Marketing has been recognised as profession in the early The tendency towards increasing specialization by persons in certain jobs has resulted in an increase in their efficiency.

Specialization has resulted in increased production, which is the base for the growth of marketing. The government is also motivating the people and providing marketing education by allowing fellowship to the graduates and a huge amount of grants to the institutions. The rural population is moving to the urban areas for the purpose of acquiring education seeking employment, business purposes and selling the agricultural and rural products in the urban areas this has necessitated a faster growth of agricultural marketing.

The modern means of transport and communication are the most important tool of developing the size of rural marketing. The increasing transportation and communication facilities have widened the market for farm products. In the absence of these facilities, the movement of produce from one area to another was limited, and the consumption of a product was restricted only to the areas of production or, at the most, to nearby areas.

Technological developments in agriculture has resulted in the substantial increase in farm production. The marketed surplus of the agricultural produce has therefore increased. This has resulted in the growth of the marketing system. Marketing Committee system and cooperative marketing are the two parallel institutions framed for the purpose of rural marketing.

The marketing system is working under the direct control of the respective state governments having its three tier system The apex institution is state marketing board, at district level central marketing committee and at block level. The primary marketing committees are functioning in the areas. This is the main reason that rural marketing is gaining more and more attention in the Indian market scene. Infrastructure continues to be a challenge in rural India.

One of the most innovative models in recent times has been the usage of the postal service by mobile operators to penetrate scratch cards to the villages.

The majority of the rural population is still unbanked. Clearly, noncash collection becomes rather unlikely.