In my 32 years of life, I have seen the country’s rural side transform. Maybe we are the luckiest generation who has witnessed such a great change in their small lifetime. A few years back we were stuck with our TV antenna to get a glimpse of the DD–Metro and now even the DTH is becoming obsolete since people are moving to online content.
I can still remember the day landline phones came to our homes and we were so excited. Then came the cordless/mobile phones/mobile phones with polyphonic ringtones/colored and BW phones; and now there are countless smartphones available around.
The change is happening at a much faster scale in all aspects of life and the market is changing. The marketing strategies are changing even faster than anything else. In the 90’s, it was difficult to make the corporates understand the meaning and classification of rural marketing. Now in 2019, it is even difficult to segregate the rural from urban. The flow of information is quick and readily available to even the most remote village of the country.
The average age of the country’s population is continuously decreasing and we are becoming a younger nation day after day. The decision-makers currently are the educated youths who are very energetic and ready to accept the creativity/innovation. Currently, it has been observed that the acceptance of new ideas/new products (tangible/intangible) has increased. Earlier the success of a product/service depended mainly on the pricing but now pricing is not a concern for the customers; they seek comfort, design, creativity and quality. Although quality is a parameter which is purely dicey which may be correct to automobile or might not be correct to fashion lovers who believe in trends?
Still, there are corporates stuck in their old and obsolete marketing strategies while the market has shifted to digital marketing at a much faster rate. Nowadays customers are not attracted to traditional marketing events and activities where the main objective is to sell sale something. The next challenge in digital marketing is that the corporates have shifted recently to digital whereas the customers shifted to vernacular language in digital marketing. The growth of viewers of digital content in vernacular language is much higher than the growth of viewers in national language or English.
A recent study of 4,612 urban citizens and 2,448 rural Indians by management consultancy KPMG India and search giant Google found that nearly 70% of Indians consider local language digital content more reliable than English content.
Current market change is very fast and if we don’t act along with the change, we might also become obsolete in the near future. Everyday market leaders are changing in every industry and the customers are changing their mode of communication, too.
Communicate better to stay alive in the future because it is the “New Age of Rural Marketing” and the market is very ruthless.
nice article