Fundamentals of Rural Marketing

Rural marketing is now a two-way marketing process. There is inflow of products into rural markets for production or consumption and there is also outflow of products to urban areas. The rural market has been growing steadily over the past few years and is now even bigger than the urban market. About 70 per cent of India's population lives in villages. More than 800 million people live in villages of India. 'Go rural' is the marketer's new slogan. Indian marketers as well as multinationals, such as Colgate-Palmolive, Godrej and Hindustan Lever have focused on rural markets. Thus, looking at the opportunities, which rural markets offer to the marketers, it can be said that the future is very promising for those who can understand the dynamics of rural markets and exploit them to their best advantage. Since ancient times, Indian villages had the concept of village markets popularly known as the village haats.