Impact of Innovations in Rural Marketing: A Case Study of HUL

Abstract

The applications of principles of creativity and processes of innovation are the causes of effectiveness in marketing. Innovation is defined as exploiting new ideas leading to the creation of a new product, process or service. Another way of putting this is that an innovation lowers the costs and/or increases the benefits of a task. A wildly successful innovation increases the benefits-to-costs ratio. The innovation in rural marketing is brought by significant changes in the marketing mixes and four A’s. Innovative marketing of products is about leveraging the marketing mix, namely the four P’s: Product (Design and Packaging), Price, Place, and Promotion in ways that has not been before by the organization implementing the innovations. Rural marketing is customisation of the products as per the requirement of rural consumers to create, deliver, and communicate value to customers. The standard of living, rate of consumption for the rural consumer is entirely different from the urban consumer. Various consumer goods companies have customised their prices and pack sizes for penetrating the rural market. For instance CavinKare’s Chic shampoo sachet @ Re 1 has brought revolution in rural marketing. To develop a product to suit the rural scenario, companies came up with special rural products, like battery free radio by Phillips, Sampoorna TV by LG, chotta haathi, Tata Ace by Tata and so on.

Keywords: Innovation, Promotion, FMCG, Benefit-to-cost

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