Rural Marketing-A New Dimension of Marketing in the New Millennium

Abstract

The urban market is getting saturated while villagers are flush with 'disposable income' thanks to generous harvests in the recent years. The estimated potential in rural markets is about three times that of the European market. This certainly defines the potential volume of business that can be generated in rural Indian markets. For quite some time now, the attraction of rural India has been the subject of immense discussion among the corporate houses. With the increase in the rural literacy levels and the exposure to media, people in rural areas are becoming conscious about their buying decisions like their urban counterparts. This makes it even more challenging for the companies to understand the buying behavior, the consuming pattern, the need and wants of the rural consumer. This paper traverses through the path of rural marketing. It goes on encompassing the challenges faced by the companies to market their products and also the strategies which could be adopted by the companies for overcoming these challenges. The research paper mainly focuses on bridging the gap between the rural and the urban customers by adopting and re-designing their existing strategies.