What makes rural consumer buy and recognize a product?
Answers
Answer:
It is often said that if you can sell a product across the length and breadth of India, you can easily sell it in any part of the world. Partly due to the unimaginable diversity of the country and partly due to a great divide between its rural and urban areas, selling and marketing have been the most daunting tasks in this part of the world. The task is even more uphill, when it comes to tapping the rural customer. Often, marketing managers are caught off guard in the rural heartland. And, problems are plenty lack of infrastructure, inadequate distribution network, lack of understanding of the customers mindset. Sometimes, the problem is due to the misconceived notions companies have about rural customer. Marketers in India have the mentality that rural is a niche market. Traditionally, companies have been pegging rural market as difficult to sell which should not be the case, says Anurag Gupta, president - strategic initiatives & integration, TERRA, Mudra Group. The idea of a rural consumer gets blurred by descriptions which reduce such customers to a mere set of numbers. Like any other consumer, he too has aspirations and desires and the human angle is often is ignored by experts.