Brand managers need to connect with rural consumers, say experts
For tapping the huge market potential at the bottom of the pyramid, brand managers need to connect with the rural consumers, build bridges of trust, create value, communicate their brand proposition and also offer a personalized approach in their marketing.
These were the observations made by some of the leading corporate brand managers at Mercatique 2008, a national level marketing summit organised by MAXIM, the marketing association of the city-based Xavier Institute of Management.
“There are about 400 million people in India who earn less than $2 a day and together they constitute a huge market to be tapped by the different corporate organisations in the country. Today, rural marketing is the new buzzword and the focus of corporate entities is to get all the consumers at the base of the pyramid to buy their products”, said a top executive of cigarette to FMCG major, ITC Limited.
“The rural market is extremely fragmented and every individual that is being targeted in such a market has extremely limited purchasing power. For the big corporate entities, there is strong need to effectively communicate their brand proposition to the rural consumers as these corporates face a stiff competition from the unorganised retailers in the rural market who offer their products at cheaper rates”, he added.
Citing the example of e-choupal, one of the revolutionary initiatives taken up by ITC to make deep inroads into the rural market, he said that the company helped to improve the quality of farm produce and also eliminated the role of middle men who were not paying a fair price to the farmers.
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