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RURAL MARKETING – CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT. Dr. Sachin Vernekar. Director Bharati Vidyapeeth’s Institute of Management & Research, New Delhi. Introduction.
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RURAL MARKETING – CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT Dr.Sachin Vernekar DirectorBharati Vidyapeeth’s Institute of Management & Research, New Delhi
Introduction As a result of the “Green Revolution,” there is a socio-economic revolution taking place in Indian villages since last three decades. Increasing knowledge of fertilisers, water resources, pesticides, better quality seeds, modern farm equipments and methods of farming have changed the villages far better. The per capita income of the farmers is on the increase and the manner in which they spend their disposable income has also changed. The rural market is not passive. It is vibrant and growing at a faster pace. It will soon outstrip the urban market if this pace of development continues.
Rural society in India There is a lack of universal definition of rural and consequently urban society in India. The differences exist between urban and rural societies but both are part of one human society.
The societies are changeable: the rural urban societies change as industrialisation takes place in India. There is lack of universal definition for rural society. All appear to know what is city life and what is village life. In Europe, a place is called a town if the population figures exceed 2500. This definition cannot hold good in Asia due to a large population.
The definition of urban society adopted by 2001 census is as under: All places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee etc. All other places: (i) minimum population of 5000 (ii) at least 75 % of the male working population working engaged in non-agricultural pursuits and (iii) a density of population of atleast 400 persons per square kilometre. For our purpose, the reserve condition of the urban society above may be taken as rural.
Rural Market:Few Facts As per the 2001 census data, India has a total population of 1027 million of Which rural population is large and is 742 million.
1.Rural Community: Family is an important unit which exercises social control. Even today there is the joint family system. 2. Community feeling and co-operation: There is also co-operation and understanding in a rural society. 3.Marriage in rural society: Rural Indian considers marriage as part of his/her religious obligation. Divorce is not accepted in the rural society, as such there are practically no divorces in rural society. 4.Status of women in rural India: The status of women in rural culture is inferior to men. The role of women is within the four walls of the house.
Occupation Pattern • 5. Basic occupations that exists and help directly agro-related works are: • Farm labourer, • Priest, • Blacksmith, • Carpenter, • Washerman, • Barber, • Shoe maker and • Milkman.
Literacy level 6. In the 2001 of census the all India literacy level was 65.4%. The census in the rural area is less than 60% for males and around 45% for females.
Infrastructure facilities • Roads: The roads connectivity and the quality of the roads are poor. • Warehouses: There are no scientific or adequate warehousing facilities. • Water : water management is lacking. • Electricity: The energy requirements like pumpsets are not fully utilized because of high cost of electricity and bad quality. • Transport equipments: Due to scarcity of funds, a villager is not able to hire or buy large size carriers to transport his produce directly to the markets. Trans-shipment or small packs spoil the goods.
Communication: This is one area where there is perceptible improvement since the last one decade. • Modern means and implements in agriculture: The tractors, thrashers, pumpsets and graders are now entering the Indian agri-scenario.
India Shining Forex inflows, stock market indices and investor wealth are at their highest ever. Ask any banker or businessman for a roll call of industries that are booming, and he’ll say “ Everything!” Retail, real estate, education, aviation, IT, Pharma , telecom, automobiles, steels, cement, engineering, finance, services… they’re all on fire.
Among both established and new business groups, there’s self-belief that they can compete and win globally. Businesspersons no longer turn to government for everything. Now, all they want government to do for them is leave them alone The wonderful thing is that the action is not restricted to the big metros, much of the growth is being driven by ‘B’ cities. ‘Small-town’ Kolhapur has many more Mercs per capita than Delhi or Mumbai. The number of millionaire households in Nagpur has exploded beyond imagination.
Big as some of the changes at home are, what is truly dramatic is the shift in the external perception of India. It has swung from one clichéd extreme to another – from a country of snake charmers and rope tricks, to a country where everyone’s smart and almost everyone’s an engineer.
Between 2000 and 2005, the number of internet user has grown eight times from 5m to almost 40m, mobile phones by nineteen times from 2.3m to about 45m, personal credit off-take from $10b to over $30b. In 2000, there were 18000 cyber cafes; by 2005 they had grown by about six times to 105350. Investor wealth grew by nearly 50% from Rs. 16.8 lakh crore to RS 24.6 lakh crore during 2005.
All India GSM subscriber base reached 58.51 million at the end of 2005, up from the 37.37 million in year 2004. Bharti continued to lead the GSM pack with 16.33 million subscriber base, a market share of 28%. BSNL, which added over a million mobile connections in December, ended the year with 14.3 million and a market share of 24%.
Computer sales up 36% in rural and urban area Sound economic growth and buoyant buying sentiment have pushed up PC sales by 36% , at 2.3 million, during the first half (H1) of this fiscal (2005-06). Top four metros accounted for 30% computer sales, with 16% growth in consumption. The rest was accounted for by smaller towns and cities, which showed a growth of 44%.
The Customer experience management in Rural India Ask a marketing professional and he is sure to tell you that the world has changed – even though the eternal truths of marketing remain more or less the same. Well ! He or she may be entirely right. The American Marketing Association has, for the first time since 1985, changed the official definition of marketing. It happened last summer.
The new definition? “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and managing customer relationship in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders”. The biggest buzz phrase among marketing professionals today is CEM – The customer experience management.
The only differentiator that brands can rely on for lasting advantage is the experience that a customer carries within his or her head. If a customer starts believing in a brand and starts taking some degree of ownership of it, the brand will have become a part of him or her. And this calls for three focus areas. One is to find the right customer hook. Two, the key to managing customer experience lies in taking the story well beyond the product.
Three, you cannot practice CEM without planning for great employee experience as well. The concept of customer value is getting finer by the day and both theorists and practitioners are seeing newer ways of capturing it. S. Shivakumar , the brainchild behind ITC’s unique and hugely successful internet- based commodity trading called e-chaupal, has this to add. He says: “it is easy to create customer value but the problem is to capture a part of that value for your shareholders.”
Management Gurus C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy offer a slight twist to the customer – centricity argument. They argue that products and service differentiation are passé and competitive advantage lies in meaningful customer experiences. They quickly add that companies should not guess what experience customers might find compelling, instead, they should innovate a process that enables every customer to create the product and service experience she wants.
