Rural markets emerging as an imperative growth engine of India – An exploratory study

The Indian rural market has been growing progressively over the past few years and is now even bigger than the urban market. About 70 per cent of India's population lives in rural areas. More than 800 million people live in villages of India. ‘Go rural’ is the marketer's new slogan. Indian marketers as well as multinationals companies have focused on rural markets. Rural marketing is now a two-way marketing process. There is inflow of products into rural markets for production or consumption and there is also outflow of products to urban areas. The main reason why the companies are focusing on rural market and developing effective strategies is to tap the market potential that can be predictable in this manner. Hence the study intended to identify the emerging rural markets and its imperative growth in India.