Rural & Green Marketing

Green Marketing

According to the American Marketing Association, green marketing is the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe. Thus green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes, as well as modifying advertising. Yet defining green marketing is not a simple task. Other similar terms used are Environmental Marketing and Ecological Marketing.

Green marketing cases
1.Philips Light's "Marathon".
Philips Lighting's first shot at marketing a standalone compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb , Earth Light , at $15 each versus 75 cents for incandescent bulbs.Sadly it couldn't climb out of its deep green niche. The company brilliantly re-launched the product as "Marathon," underscoring its new "super long life" positioning and promise of saving $26 in energy costs over its five-year lifetime. Finally, with the U.S. EPA's Energy Star label to add credibility as well as new sensitivity to rising utility costs and electricity shortages, sales climbed 12 percent in an otherwise flat market.


2.Car sharing services
Car-sharing services addresses the longer-term solutions to consumer needs for better fuel savings and fewer traffic tie-ups and parking nightmares (not to mention more open space and reduction of greenhouse gases) .They may be thought of as a "time-sharing" system for cars. Consumers who drive less than 7,500 miles a year and don't need a car for work can save thousands of dollars annually by joining one of the many services springing up , including ZipCar (East Coast), Flex Car (Washington State), and Hour Car (Twin Cities).


3.Introduction of CNG in Delhi
New Delhi,the India's capital was getting polluted gradually at a very fast pace till Supreme Court of India forced a change of fuel on it.In 2002 , a directive was issued to completely adopt CNG in all public transport systems to curb pollution.






Rural Marketing
Rural Markets are defined as those segments of overall market of any economy, which are distinct from the other types of markets like stock market, commodity markets or Labor economics. Rural Markets constitute an important segment of overall economy, for example, in the USA, out of about 3000 counties, around 2000 counties are rural, that is, non-urbanized, with population of 55 million. Typically, a rural market will represent a community in a rural area with a population of 2500 to 30000

Significance
In recent years, rural markets have acquired significance in countries like China and India, as the overall growth of the economy has resulted into substantial increase in the purchasing power of the rural communities. On account of the green revolution in India, the rural areas are consuming a large quantity of industrial and urban manufactured products. In this context, a special marketing strategy, namely, rural marketing has taken shape. Sometimes, rural marketing is confused with agricultural marketing – the later denotes marketing of produce of the rural areas to the urban consumers or industrial consumers, whereas rural marketing involves delivering manufactured or processed inputs or services to rural producers or consumers.
Strategies
Dynamics of rural markets differ from other market types, and similarly rural marketing strategies are also significantly different from the marketing strategies aimed at an urban or industrial consumer. This, along with several other related issues, have been subject matter of intense discussions and debate in countries like India and China and focus of even international symposia organized in these countries[2].

Rural markets and rural marketing involve a number of strategies, which include:

- Client and location specific promotion
- Joint or cooperative promotion
- Bundling of inputs
- Management of demand
- Developmental marketing
- Unique selling proposition (USP)
- Extension services
- Business ethics
- Partnership for sustainability

Client and Location specific promotion involves a strategy designed to be suitable to the location and the client.

Joint or co-operative promotion strategy involves participation between the marketing agencies and the client.

'Bundling of inputs' denote a marketing strategy, in which several related items are sold to the target client, including arrangements of credit, after-sale service, and so on.

Management of demand involve continuous market research of buyer’s needs and problems at various levels so that continuous improvements and innovations can be undertaken for a sustainable market performance.

Developmental marketing refer to taking up marketing programmes keeping the development objective in mind and using various managerial and other inputs of marketing to achieve these objectives.

Media, both traditional as well as the modern media, is used as a marketing strategy.

Unique Selling Propositions (USP) involve presenting a theme with the product to attract the client to buy that particular product. For examples, some of famous Indian Farm equipment manufactures have coined catchy themes, which they display along with the products, to attract the target client, that is the farmers. English version of some of such themes would read like:

- The heartbeats of rural India
- With new technique for a life time of company
- For the sake of progress and prosperity
Extension Services denote, in short, a system of attending to the missing links and providing the required know-how.

Ethics in Business. form, as usual, an important plank for rural markets and rural marketing.

Partnership for sustainability involve laying and building a foundation for continuous and long lasting relationship.


Present position
Rural markets, as part of any economy, have untapped potential. There are several difficulties confronting the effort to fully explore rural markets. The concept of rural markets in India, as also in several other countries, like China[3], is still in evolving shape, and the sector poses a variety of challenges, including understanding the dynamics of the rural markets and strategies to supply and satisfy the rural consumers.