Marketing is all about convincing people to buy the products or service of the company, however, most marketing tactics and effort is directed towards the urban centers and the rural market lags behind and that is where rural marketing comes into play. Rural marketing in simple words refers to that marketing in which products are designed and marketed keeping in mind the mindset and living standard of people living in rural areas. In order to understand more about this concept, one should look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of rural marketing –
Advantages of Rural Marketing
Untapped Market
The first and foremost advantage of rural marketing is that there is a lot of untapped demand in the rural sector which can be converted into sales by the company doing rural marketing and hence can increase the bottom line as well as the overall business of the company. In simple words, the untapped market of the rural area is like a treasure, just like the treasure is difficult to find but once it is found the person who has discovered the treasure becomes rich in the same way once the company is able to connect to the rural population through marketing than all the untapped demand of rural market will come to company’s doorstep.
Less Competition
In the case of marketing where there is intense competition everywhere, rural markets are an exception in the sense that not many companies are interested in doing rural marketing and that is where companies can take advantage do aggressive rural marketing and capture the market share of rural markets. In simple words just like some people want to be big fish in a small pond rather than small fish in a big ocean in the same way company can become a player in the rural market rather than being a small player in urban centers.
Easier to Convince
In the case of rural areas since not many companies products are there, it is much easier to convince the people about the usability of the product or service as there are no close substitutes which is not the case with urban areas where due to close substitutes and information overload it is a big task for companies to convince customers and retain the existing customers for long with the company.
Disadvantages of Rural Marketing
Limited to Few Products
The biggest disadvantage of rural marketing is that not all products can be marketed to rural areas as the demand of rural area is more need-based rather than being want-based. In simple words, while in case of urban areas if there are 4 members in the family than all 4 will demand expensive mobiles or have 2 or 3 cars while in the case of the rural area a 4 member family will be happy with 1 simple mobile and car as they do expenditure on the basis of their needs and not on the basis of their luxuries.
Lower Margin
In the case of metro cities and urban centers, people purchase goods or services to show off and are also quality-conscious hence they do not pay attention to the price of products which enables the company to charge a higher price for its products and thus have big profit margin while in case of rural areas people are cost-conscious and will not buy higher-priced products and hence the company can sell products having lower margin. In simple words, if the company is thinking that it will able to sell goods at the same profit margin in the rural market as that of the urban market then it will be in for a disappointment.
Limited Medium
In the case of marketing there are many medium through which companies can market such as radio marketing, television advertising, newspaper marketing, digital marketing, and so on but as far as rural marketing is concerned how many of the above mediums can be put to use is a debatable topic as rural households do not have to access to all the above medium resulting in a limitation for a company thinking of doing rural marketing for its products or services.
As one can see from the above that rural marketing has pros as well as cons and that is the reason why any company thinking of doing this marketing for its product or service should carefully read the above points and then only should take any decision regarding the execution of rural marketing.