Indian rural market: issues, opportunities & challenges Imtiaz Mohammad*, Wajih Syed Ahmed** *Assistant Professor, Surya College of Business Management, Department of Business Management, Lucknow **Assistant Professor, Integral University, Faculty of Management & Research, Lucknow Online published on 7 April, 2014. Abstract Mahatma Gandhi had once said: "India's way is not Europe's. India is not Calcutta and Bombay. India lives in several hundreds of villages" In recent years, rural markets have acquired significance, as the overall growth of the economy has resulted into substantial increase in the purchasing power of the rural communities. On account of green revolution, 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 emerged. But often, rural marketing is confused withagricultural marketing – the latter 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.Rural markets, as part of any economy, have untapped potential. There are several difficulties confronting the effort to fully explore rural markets. The concept of rural markets in India is still in evolving shape, and the sector poses a variety of challenges. Distribution costs and non availability of retail outlets are major problems faced by the marketers. The success of a brand in the Indian rural market is as unpredictable as rain. Many brands, which should have been successful, have failed miserably. This is because, most firms try to extend marketing plans that they use in urban areas to the rural markets. The unique consumption patterns, tastes, and needs of the ruralconsumers should be analyzed at the product planning stage so that they match the needs of the rural people. This paper tries to explore the issues, opportunities & challenges in rural marketing and the strategies that a marketercan incorporate while approaching the rural consumer. Top Keywords Rural Market, Issues & challenges. Top |