ADVERTISING AND MARKETING IN RURAL INDIA

Posted on 07 February 2009 by admin (8)

The book under review is an attempt to explore the various facts of rural marketing and rural
advertising in India. The development and evolution at rural marketing can be understood by
keeping in mind the various phases and shifts in rural advertising and marketing. This attempt
has been made to illustrate, how different manifestation of rural advertising (TV, print, wall
advertising etc.) affect interaction between the buyers and the sellers, the consumers
association with different media modalities, the nature of information structure and the
impact on the processing effictiveness and acceptability of a message. This makes
rethinkening the role and importance at rural communication in India today. Rural marketing
is rapidly gaining importance in the post liberalization period in India.

Rural advertising involves products and issues that are pertinent to rural India. The term
‘advertising’ had covered both social and commercial senders of messages.

The evolution of rural media has a long history of evolution. Within this tradition of wall
painting may be traced to the Indian rocks art painting that go back to 4000 Bc. According to
Dube(1992), there is a relationship between the mobilary art, the wall painting in the houses
of contemporary tribes, and the older rock art in the panchamashi Shelters. This form gained
more prominence during the rule at Ashoka, the Great, who systematically used it to reach
the remotest corners of his empire. The most vibrant and colourful wall painting can still be
witnessed in the rural households of Rajasthan. Painteel on the wet lime plaster in mineral
colours and these paintings depicts day-to-day scenes of life. And these were the
advertisement of the ancient times and it also uses for communication at that time.

The tenesis of the book lies on a major part of the rural places in India. The author said how
to reach the unreachable? The easiest solution would be to reach rural India by means of
conventional electronic meida (Radio, TV).

TV is beyond the reach of rural India and electricity            is not yet accessible to many. The
reach of TV is                   still limited.

But radio has the maximum reach, but it is still under government control and the programme
options are limited but it has no visual content. Print media is one of the most important in
the filed of advertising and marketing in Rural India. It’s low level of literacy and lack at
availability at the right time and place are still the major problem.

The author has also depicted the place of advertising and marketing in the rural India for its
present and future. The economic liberalization, globalization and growing economic power
have led to the development of rural India in the last two decades. It explores the various
facts of rural media and integrated marketing communication. The rural advertising provides
a rich range of communications such as madari, streetplayers dancers, story tellers etc.
influences in the conventional advertising and many more.
The author attempted to show in the CELM model, that the message has to target a particular
group of audience. In case of the rural audience, if the message is not coded by the audience,
it won’t motivate them to get involved in the message. The author has also highlighted the
verbal and non-verbal salient features of the various modalities of rural advertising; hybridity
is identified as one of the most distinctive colorful features of rural advertising and
marketing.

This book presents a brief history and survey of facts about India to highlight the
multicultural heritage of the counting that leads to differences and similarities in modes of
communication. The vast emerging rural market calls for a need to look at rural India and its
relationship to advertising. Rural India has much to offer in communicative need assessment
and its execution must be naturalistic in nature.