Significant
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Rural markets in countries like China and India are growing faster than urban markets due to substantial increases in rural purchasing power from economic growth. This has resulted in rural areas consuming large quantities of manufactured urban products. To market to rural consumers and producers, specialized rural marketing strategies have emerged, which differ from agricultural marketing by delivering processed goods and services rather than agricultural produce. Several factors are fueling the boom in rural markets, including increased population, rural incomes, standards of living, education levels, foreign investment, and contact with urban areas through improved infrastructure.
Significant
- 1. Significant The rural markets are estimated to be growing fastly compared to the urban markets. The potentiality of rural markets is said to be like a 'woken up sleeping giant'. These facts are substantiated in a study of market growth conducted by various researches. In recent years, rural markets have acquired significance in countries like China and India, as the overall growth of the economy has resulted into substantial increase in the purchasing power of the rural communities. On account of the green revolution in India, the rural areas are consuming a large quantity of industrial and urban manufactured products. In this context, a special marketing strategy, namely, rural marketing has taken shape. Sometimes, rural marketing is confused with agricultural marketing – the later denotes marketing of produce of the rural areas to the urban consumers or industrial consumers, whereas rural marketing involves delivering manufactured or processed inputs or services to rural producers or consumers. A number of factors have been recognized as responsible for the rural market boom to come into existence: 1. Increase in population and hence increase in demand. 2. A marked increase in the rural income due to agrarian prosperity. 3. Standard of living is also increasing in rural areas. 4. Large inflow of investment for rural development programmes from government and other sources. 5. Increased contact of rural people with their urban counterparts due to development of transport and wide communication network. 6. Increase in literacy and educational level and resultant inclination to sophisticated lives by the rural folks. 7. Inflow of foreign remittances and foreign made goods into rural areas. 8. Change in the land tenure systems causing a structural change in the ownership patterns and consequent changes in the buying behaviour. 9. Rural markets are laggards in picking up new products. This will help the companies to phase their marketing efforts. This will also help to sell inventories of products out dated in urban markets.