Conceptual Expansion of the Discipline of Rural Marketing: An Objective Analysis

Abstract

Researchers have analyzed the variations in rural marketing concepts and offered definitions relating to these varying concepts. However, there seems to be a general disagreement regarding the aspects which should be included in rural marketing. This article studies the contents of various definitions of rural marketing using quantitative techniques in order to discern the probable conceptual expansion of rural marketing. Only definitions of the term ‘rural marketing’ (not just a mention of ‘rural marketing’) are considered for the present study. Dimension reduction technique and frequency tabulations are used for the content analysis. Apart from providing a definition of rural marketing using the results of the content analysis, the present study also found a strong relationship between developmental marketing and the need for rural marketers to stimulate demand through developmental activities such as appointing local inhabitants as distributors, wholesalers and retailers of their products; or by employing local manpower in other operations such as trade marketing, procurement of raw materials and selling and disseminating information on the marketer’s products directly to rural consumers.