Certificate Course in Retail and Rural Marketing

About the Course

The course aims to familiarise the students with the basic concepts of Rural Marketing, the nature of the Rural Consumer, and marketing of agricultural inputs and produce. 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 UniLever 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.

Identifying the needs of customers and potential customers, providing products/services that satisfy their needs, and developing efficient processes or systems to deliver your product/service to the market when, where, and how consumers want it.

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 urban to rural flow consists of agricultural inputs, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) such as soaps, detergents, cosmetics, textiles, and so on. The rural to urban flow consists of agricultural produce such as rice, wheat, sugar, and cotton. There is also a movement of rural products within rural areas for consumption.

Course Curriculum

Paper I: Retailing: Role, Relevance & Trends, characteristics of Retailing, The changing faces of Retail Industry in India, Retail Market Segment: Market Segmentation, Targeting &Positioning, Kinds of Market and Dimensions of Segmentation.

Paper II: Retailing Strategy: Location-Types, Importance and determining factors, Product and Merchandise Strategies, Retail Space and Ambience Management Strategies, Retail Pricing & Promotion Strategies.

Paper III: Definition of Rural Marketing, Indian Rural Market, And Environment: Population and its locations, occupation pattern, expenditure pattern, infrastructure facilities. The Rural Consumer: Characteristics, factors influencing his purchase decision, Rural demand: Nature, types of requirements, hierarchy of markets and rural market index, Problems in rural marketing.

Paper IV: Marketing of Consumable inputs and durable inputs: Marketing of Consumables and Durables: Composition of Products, Price, distribution, promotion, product redesign or modification needs. Rural Marketing Strategies Rural Market Segmentation, Strategies on product, price, promotion and distribution.