Young Rural Consumers’ Insights: Effects of Demographics and Media on Brand Awareness and Brand Image

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify the levels of brand awareness, sources of brand awareness, and brand image of smart phones among young and educated rural consumers. Data was collected from 800 young and educated rural consumers. The relevant responses were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation, and Chi-square via the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The opening of new stores that ensure the availability of all brands and the opening of service centres, among other things, are recommended to create awareness and build preference as the educated rural youth changes phones quite frequently. Males were found to be more familiar regarding awareness and usage for all brands of mobile phones than females. Marketers must focus on the needs of female consumers for creating better awareness and preference in them. It is recommended that marketers must develop their websites and update all the new applications and attractive offers over there. This is because the internet is considered as the essential source for creating awareness among the young and educated rural consumers.The coverage area of the study is too small and needs to expand to generalise the findings. Respondents were selected from educational institutions of Delhi, the capital city of India. Consequently, there is a limitation to representing the entire population of India.The findings of the paper indicate the awareness level and brand image perception among young and educated rural consumers, which is not covered much in the existing literature. From this paper, marketers and practitioners can get help in formulating strategies to make their brands popular and improve their brand equity to make their business sustainable. Empirically, marketers and practitioners should focus on media to create brand awareness among young consumers and should put more effort in making efficient use of social networking media, such as Facebook, etc.