Marketers must revise their rural marketing formula based on hard facts, say consultants
By: Rama Bijapurkar and Rajesh Shukla Rural consumption expenditure is 56% of all India expenditure as we speak, and growing faster. So is rural marketing as we once knew it dead? Some marketers say that in their experience the rural-urban divide is blurring, and the whole idea of rural marketing as we knew it (haats, wall paintings, mobile vans, paisa packs, street corner demos on benefits and methods of usage, etc.) are now obsolete; that media, physical distribution, exposure to the world, income levels, access to ecommerce have drastically improved, so let’s officially end the era of specialists in rural markets. This is true if you drive through many of the more developed states with easy road and public and private transport connectivity to the nearest large town with jobs, more rural educational facilities and higher incomes thanks to non-agricultural jobs and to better paying crops. Yet others have adopted the […]