Exogenous Stimulants influencing rural consumer’s while choosing mobile phone.

Abstract

Today, in this era of globalization marketers have not only focused serving the needs of urban customers with value, but also have started giving importance to Indian rural market. The Indian mobile industry is growing fastest in the world and continues to add more mobile phone connections every month. This growth is noticed due to liberalization of telecommunication laws and policies. According to Gartner report, after China, India would be the fastest telephone market in Asia Pacific. The Indian rural market with its vast size and demand base offers great opportunities to many marketers. Rural India comprises around 840 million people; around 70% of population, with over 600,000 villages and 56 per cent of national income.The Indian rural market generates about 50 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product. There is a slight improvement in the purchasing pattern of rural consumers as their discretionary income is increasing. If India is a huge market for mobile phone, it is also due to huge population based in rural part of India. Marketers have to work on strategies to capture the growing rural market by understanding the needs of rural consumers, which is different compared to urban consumers based on affordability and preferences, strive to provide those products and services to have a profitable exchange. The companies need to make proper assessment while marketing for the rural India. India has approximately 700 million mobile phone users, out of which 320 million are rural mobile users (How smartphones are penetrating deeper in rural India, 25^th May 2015, The rural Marketing Journal). The penetration of mobile phone in rural market has increased from 22% to 38% in the last four years. This research is an attempt to fill the gap by considering an extensive work on mobile phone as a potential market due to its ‘essential’ need for  rural market of India.