By Sourajit Aiyer
The rural consumption opportunity (including the non-metro towns) has been a common topic of discussion in several investor conferences in India recently. However, one is largely dependent on literature written from the financial centres, with limited primary visits into the hinterland.
This limits the content’s practicality, given the heterogeneous rural landscape. Moreover, the standard demographic approach to segment rural consumers may be misleading, since their behaviour is impacted by several realities, not just demographics.
Why they buy as they do, and how they behave when it comes to buying, are questions that on-the-ground observations can help understand better. Using my own experiences from visits made into the interiors of Bangladesh and India (Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, J&K, Kerala, etc), I have my own understanding of local people in these places, and I feel the 10 segments below may be useful to categorize the rural consumers across heterogeneous regions.
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