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Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 08/04/2012 08:54 PM
CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
This chapter presents review of related literature. This chapter articulates the research problem through a synthesis of the pertinent literature from different bodies of knowledge. The literature is primarily derived from academic peer reviewed journals. This chapter defines the rural consumer behaviour and decision-making process regarding the FMCGs and relevance of research gaps in the present research problem.
Sayulu and Ramana Reddy (1996)[1] suggested that the rural market offers a very promising future. But this market has certain features that hinder marketers from exploiting the opportunities. These include low literacy level, ignorance of right consumers, indifference to quality standards and lack of cooperative spirit.
Ramana Rao (1997)[2] observed that the boom in rural areas is caused by such factors as increased discretionary income, rural development schemes, well developed infrastructure, increased awareness, expanding private TV channel coverage and focus on rural market by companies.
Almost a decade back when no single company thought about reaching to the 70 percent of the potential rural customers, the Hindustan Unilever Ltd. came up with a unique marketing strategy called “Shakti Amma”. The project became a powerful tool in the hands of HUL that helps to reach the untapped area of its potential customers at the cheapest cost. It was a successful strategy in such remote areas where the role of media was totally absent, and peoples are unfamiliar with the company’s product. Despite challenges faced to penetrate in rural India, the company being focused and gradual improvement in the Shakti Project positioned the HUL as a leader of the fast moving consumer good market especially in rural India. The success of the brand HUL can be judged by the claims of the company “HUL is a part of daily life two out of three Indian” (Gupta, 2012)[3].
Initha and Govindaraju (2012)[4] study revealed that large number of people...