SUSTAINABLE AND INNOVATIVE RURAL MARKETING STRATEGIES: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES - A STUDY IN MANIPUR

The aim of this research is to study the current scenario of Rural Marketing in India, the sustainable and innovative rural marketing strategies with its various opportunities and challenges, with reference to the state of Manipur. The rural market consists of more than 83.3 crore people and this is what attracts marketers to enter in this market. To market in the territory of rural marketing corporations must understand the rural consumer. Many innovations in the strategy to market into the rural markets have been undertaken in the past years. This paper aims to understand these innovations and strategies and to understand the rural consumer of Manipur. The lifestyles of rural consumers have undergone wonderful changes due to growing incomes, increasing literacy rate, exposure, TV, mobile phones and interaction with the urban counterpart. Liberalization of trade, on one side, opened up new vistas to the marketers and on the other side, posed stiff competition. As due to the competition in the urban market, the market is more or so saturated as most of the capacity of the purchasers has been targeted by the marketers. So the marketers are looking for extending their product categories to an unexplored market i.e. the rural market. They entered rural markets with the proper understanding with the help of smart selling techniques.