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State and Explain The Difference Between Consumer Behaviour in Rural and Urban Market

There are several key differences between consumer behavior in rural and urban markets in India: 1) Rural literacy levels are lower than urban areas, but rural consumers can be just as intelligent with a strong emphasis on value. 2) Rural consumers are very conscious of value for money and may not purchase expensive or premium brands. 3) It can be challenging to convince rural consumers to try new products as they do not trust outsiders easily. 4) Rural consumers tend to be more brand loyal but recognize brands more through visual cues like color and logos due to lower literacy.

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620 views2 pages

State and Explain The Difference Between Consumer Behaviour in Rural and Urban Market

There are several key differences between consumer behavior in rural and urban markets in India: 1) Rural literacy levels are lower than urban areas, but rural consumers can be just as intelligent with a strong emphasis on value. 2) Rural consumers are very conscious of value for money and may not purchase expensive or premium brands. 3) It can be challenging to convince rural consumers to try new products as they do not trust outsiders easily. 4) Rural consumers tend to be more brand loyal but recognize brands more through visual cues like color and logos due to lower literacy.

Uploaded by

jaya rani das
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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State and explain the difference between consumer behaviour in rural and urban

market.

The Differences 
The economic growth experienced in India may have reduced the absolute number of
poor and lifted millions out of poverty, however, income disparities and regional
imbalances persist. The variations in the level of development in a region have resulted
in tremendous heterogeneity. The success of marketing lies in understanding these
differences. 

1. Although there are more literate people in rural India (49.3 crore) than in urban India
(28.54 crore), the rural literacy level is only 68.9% compared to 85% in urban area. A rural
customer may not be very educated but has lot of common sense. He is as intelligent if
not more and sharper in many ways than his urban counterpart. This is bought out by an
incident where in an aggressive farmer held out a cut section of a tyre in his hand and
complained to the tyre company executive that though the tyre companies claimed that
the tyres had ’8 plys’ and he could see only 4 plys in the tyre. The executive had to
explain in detail about the process of tyre making to convince the farmer that not all the
8 layers used in making the 8 ply can be seen. 

2. A rural customer is very conscious of “value for money”, and may not always go for
cheap products or premium or image products. As he may not afford high price, he does
not fancy products with features that do not enhance the basic functions of the product. 

3. Rural customers do not trust the outsiders easily. It is not very easy to convenience a
rural customer. It is a challenge to introduce anything new to rural customers.

4. Rural customers are more brand loyal than urban customers. However, as the literacy
level is low they recognize the brand more through colour, symbol and logo. 

5. The rural customer’s involvement in purchase of any product is high. In some cases
such as buying TV, he consults a number of people. Both rural and urban consumers
experience significant influence of their families for buying the select products. However
the rural consumers experience greater influence of their families as compared to their
urban counterparts.
 
6. Another important difference is that the rural customer’s life is highly routinised and
laid back. Sunday is not a holiday in the village and the he cannot be made to hurry
through. 

7. The rural income mostly depends on the agriculture and hence income and purchase
reaches greater heights after harvest time. Hence, the disposable income varies across
the nation depending on the area, crop, weather etc. Consequently, the buying patterns
vary with urban buying patterns. 
8. Traditional values, customs and perceptions have a stronger hold on the rural
customers than urban customers. This impacts developing common communication
programme for entire country. 

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