Rural Retail Innovations in India: New Dimension in Marketing

According to the great management guru Peter Ducker "the organizations’ have only two functions, one is marketing and other is innovation." Rural markets are characterized with huge potential for marketers, but at the same time pose several challenges to serve them with similar set of marketing mix used in urban settings. The main challenges in rural marketing are: Physical distribution, Channel management, Promotion and communication, Poor infrastructure, Uneconomical market size, Diverse socio-economic Consumer profile. Against the backdrop of such a market environment, marketers need to design creative solutions to achieve success in rural markets. The problems of physical distribution and channel management adversely affect the quality of service (delivery) and cost. With poor or even no means of communication to exchange information with rural consumers directly, the success of a brand depends largely on the village retailers. Therefore, rural marketers have felt a great need to overcome the existing limitations across business stages in general and distribution in particular of which retailing is the final stage.