Rural Marketing:Analysis of Rural Markets of India by NCAER

With experts pointing out that rural India will comparatively remain safe from recession and marketeers should target them lets take a look at some of the data that is available on the potential of rural markets according to National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER)

• Rural India accounts for 70% of India’s population, 56% of national income, 64% of total expenditure and one-third of the total savings
  
• In real terms (at 1999 prices), the size of the rural economy will be about Rs16 trillion in 2012-13 as compared to Rs12 trillion in 2007-08
  
• 90% of the rural population is concentrated in villages with a population of less than 2,000
  
• The share of low- income households (Rs45,000 average household income at 2004-05 prices) in rural India will decline from 58% in 1995 to 27% at present to 14% further in 2012
  
• On the other hand, the middle-high income households (Rs2.25 lakh average household income at 2004-05 prices) will constitute about half of the rural households. These constituted 13% of total households in 1995-96.
  
• Rural consumers accounted for around 60% of the total ownership of low-cost items such as bicycles, pressure cookers and wristwatches in 1995-96. The share is expected to rise to three-fourths in 2009-10.
  
• In the case of consumer durables, the rural share in (the) FMCG segment is quite high (53%) and is likely to increase to 60% by the end of the decade
  

However rural markets are very tricky to crack and Indian marketeers are still trying to figure out their strategies for these markets which have to be different from the urban markets.

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