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ABSTRACT
Rural marketing has gained emphasis in a couple of years because of industrialization and stable economic activity. The impact of urbanization on the rural areas and the increase in the purchasing power of the Indian rural masses in recent past has fuelled a lot of interest in the rural India. More and more companies are designing products and various marketing strategies for the rural customers. The current paper is an attempt to discuss the rural market and its scope with the various challenges and opportunities associated with it. The designed to be the rural products and the strategies adopted by the companies in order to prevail in the rural market are discussed. Finally the emerging trends in the context of Indian rural marketing are also discussed in the paper.
Keywords: Rural: marketing, products, strategies, challenges, emerging trends.
INTRODUCTION
The developing India has led to the increase in purchasing power of rural masses in recent past and has fuelled lot of interest to study the rural India. The Indian rural market was considered a market only for low end products; today companies are seeing the market as the new growth avenue. Comprising more than 70 per cent of the total consumers in India and annual market potential in excess of Rs 1230 billions, rural India is being charmed by novel ways and means.
According to a survey conducted by Mckinsey in 2008, rural India with a population of 630 million (approximately) would become bigger than total consumer market in countries such as South Korea or Canada in another 20 years and it will grow at least four times from its existing size. About 70% of India's population lives in 627000 villages in rural areas (Table 1). As per the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) study, there area as many 'middle income and above' households in the rural areas as there are 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 NCAER projections, the number of middle & high income households in rural India is expected to grow 80 million to 111 million by 2007. India's rural markets are often misunderstood. The Indian rural market is a...