Core value underlying purchase decisions for the rural consumer

Abstract

We initially wondered about the wide disparity among rural and urban consumers in their economic, social status and how it would lead to change in their standard of living. We also found out the apparent lack of interest shown by major manufacturers in spite of stagnating top-line and bottom-line in venturing into the rural market. The reasons on our literature study turned out to be the difficulty in influencing rural customers since they had not been studied as extensively as the urban consumer. We wanted to know about the core values that guided the rural consumer when he made his purchase decisions. We started with our literature study hoping to unearth and to delve deep into the minds of the rural consumer. Some of the values that were perceived to be important were included in our study to test whether they really held true and how best companies could utilise it. The values that we included in our study were risk handling (risk reduction and risk avoidance), simplicity in life, self esteem and providing the best for the family. This was followed by visits to the rural markets where we probed the consumers in durable (Television) and FMCG (Detergent) categories and their perceptions about the same. The different methods which we used to analyse the qualitative data by converting it into quantitative data provided us with dominant values in each of the categories and their perceptions about brands. Risk handling was the dominant theme in purchase of Televisions and being a standard durable, this core value which was guiding the purchase was extrapolated to the durables category. In detergents, simplicity in life was the core value that they were looking for. Risk handling was a close second. This, we believe is because the consumers were not offered a chance of reducing their risk by any of the manufacturers. From these core values that a rural consumer looks at before purchase, we recommended a series of steps that companies could undertake both in durables and the FMCG sector to conquer the rural market. We believe by our work, we have helped in unearthing one piece of the puzzle which is known as the rural consumer’s mind and hopefully further work in this area would help in destroying the myth that the rural consumer is an enigma. This perception only exists because of the lack of work in this area and we believe she isn’t.