Rural Retail Research Articles

The antecedents on rural distribution problem and rural retailer's preference towards Pepsico India holdings private limited in Tamilnadu, India

With the growth in the retail industry, the corresponding demand for real estate is also being created. Further, with the online medium of retail gaining more and more acceptance, there is a tremendous growth opportunity for retail companies, both domestic and international. We have studied various factors for retailer preference towards PepsiCo products and problems faced in the distribution channel in the rural market in Tamilnadu, India. In this research study, we examine the retailer preference towards PepsiCo products and problems faced in the distribution channel in rural areas, retailer preference for PepsiCo products in rural areas; researcher collected the list of rural retailers in Tamilnadu and from the local distributor database list and from the PepsiCo Ltd. distributor list. Only rural retailers that had operation for at least three years were included in the study. The data was collected through in-depth personal interviews with the rural retailers. These strategies are leads to capturing retailer preference towards PepsiCo products and problems faced in the distribution channel.

The antecedents on rural distribution problem and rural retailer's preference towards Pepsico India holdings private limited in Tamilnadu, India

The antecedents on rural distribution problem and rural retailer's preference towards Pepsico India holdings private limited in Tamilnadu, India

Purchase Preference Factors for Traditional Rural Retailers: A Cross-sectional Conceptual Study

Executive Summary A scrutiny of existing literature suggests that traditional rural retailers are important for the success of rural marketing efforts in developing nations. The present study attempts to decipher the indications on the factors that could possibly influence purchase preferences of rural traditional retailers through the use of statistical methods of content analysis. The purpose of the study is to identify the factors that influence purchase preference, analyse the temporal movement of conceptualizations of these factors, and determine whether academic thought on this topic has a conceptual core. This research work presents a longitudinal analysis of the factors over a period of 40 years: the need for information and training on new products and their selling techniques seem to maintain the same significance throughout the study period; the need for discounts has maintained almost a uniform ranking over the period of study; there is also a relative stability in the need for regular/frequent service; doorstep delivery had the highest ranking in the first period, which is probably owing to the relative weakness of delivery systems during the early phase of rural marketing; the requirement for credit seems to increase from the first period to the second period and then decrease. The factor of margins and commissions seems highly ranked only in the second period. Dimension reduction technique and frequency tabulations are the methods used for content analysis. The core concepts indicate that a traditional rural retailer can possibly be persuaded to purchase high-demand products and brands, through the provision of credit, discounts, quantity discount schemes, margins and commissions, by using local distributors and by appointment of local company staff to provide regular service. The analysis has yielded two discernible conceptual clusters: high-demand products and brands and credit; and doorstep delivery and regular service. The clusters that emerge during the content analysis of traditional rural retailers’ purchase preference factors reflect the exact content from conclusions in at least one research paper that is not used (to prevent cyclic conclusions) during the content-analysis process. The result confirms that researchers have been moving on similar lines in their conceptualizations of the purchase preference factors of traditional rural retailers.

The relationship between rural retailing, women agropreneurs innovativeness and firm performance: a conceptual review and avenues for future research

Now is the time for women agropreneurs to accept this challenge for mutual benefits. Inadequate rural marketing network will be a major bottleneck in women agropreneurship. The women agropreneurs should be oriented to make a swift forecast of the demand for various commodities and exploit the opportunities. There is good scope for setting up market outlets to reach the customers without involving too many middlemen. Business houses can establish a direct link with women agropreneurs' firms for procuring raw materials. Such agencies can support women agropreneurs with seeds of improved varieties, finance and other critical inputs for optimising their crop yield. In this context, the Make in India initiative, which aims at job creation, should focus on rural India to ensure impact. This work will help to understand critical success factors (CSFs), Critical Failure Factors (CFFs), characteristics of Indian rural retailing, barriers, risk, prospects, constraints & consequences of rural retailing with special reference to Indian women agropreneurs' innovativeness and firm performance.

The relationship between rural retailing, women agropreneurs innovativeness and firm performance: a conceptual review and avenues for future research

The relationship between rural retailing, women agropreneurs innovativeness and firm performance: a conceptual review and avenues for future research

Dynamics of ecosystems - lessons from Indian case studies

In an increasingly interconnected world, accelerated by technology perfusion, and process standardisation, companies need to leverage competencies of an entire business network to gain competitive advantage. On this count, business ecosystem approach is one way of describing the operating environment in which companies and consortia involve actively. Obviously, a business ecosystem requires a nodal organisation to make it uniquely valuable to all participants in the system and drive the system to its competitive position. A business ecosystem is not insulated from environment context(s) or the ingenuity of competitive players. In this paper, the authors have analysed two Indian business ecosystems, their construct, uniqueness and dynamic value sharing by their constituents. This theoretical construct is based on an in depth assessment of functioning of two such systems in India, one a vast dairy cooperative that has a strong brand 'Amul' and the other a large farm inputs company that has created a rural retail network serving the farm sector. In both cases the lead organisation has evolved to meet environmental challenges. Theoretical constructs on ecosystem in published literature broadly describe these two cases. There is scope for further research on more such ecosystems that are rapidly emerging in India.

Constructing a conceptual model of purchase behaviour of village shopkeepers – a study of small rural retailers in Eastern India

Small rural retailers play a pivotal role in the success of marketing efforts of FMCG companies in developing markets. This is owing to the influence of small retailers, alternatively termed as unorganized retailers, on rural consumers. The present study attempts to develop an inventory of items that may predict purchase behaviour. Owing to the unavailability of a suitable instrument in extant literature, a survey of rural marketing practitioners has been conducted to develop relevant statements for questionnaire. The unobservable constructs and the relationships between the constructs are brought out through a study in the eastern region of India. The following constructs have been found to impact the purchase preferences of rural unorganized retailers: quality of supply and delivery, margins and profit, product demand, credit, brand reputation, social and personal recognition, sales force behaviour, seasonality and festivity, and company reputation. A marketer should understand the factors influencing purchase behaviour while targeting rural retailers in developing markets.

A Mixed Methods Comparison of Urban and Rural Retail Corner Stores.

Efforts to transform corner stores to better meet community dietary needs have mostly occurred in urban areas but are also needed in rural areas. Given important contextual differences between urban and rural areas, it is important to increase our understanding of the elements that might translate successfully to similar interventions involving stores in more rural areas. Thus, an in-depth examination and comparison of corner stores in each setting is needed. A mixed methods approach, including windshield tours, spatial visualization with analysis of frequency distribution, and spatial regression techniques were used to compare a rural North Carolina and large urban (Los Angeles) food environment. Important similarities and differences were seen between the two settings in regards to food environment context, spatial distribution of stores, food products available, and the factors predicting corner store density. Urban stores were more likely to have fresh fruits (Pearson chi2 = 27.0423; p < 0.001) and vegetables (Pearson chi2 = 27.0423; p < 0.001). In the urban setting, corner stores in high income areas were more likely to have fresh fruit (Pearson chi2 = 6.00; p = 0.014), while in the rural setting, there was no difference between high and low income area in terms of fresh fruit availability. For the urban area, total population, no vehicle and Hispanic population were significantly positively associated (p < 0.05), and median household income (p < 0.001) and Percent Minority (p < 0.05) were significantly negatively associated with corner store count. For the rural area, total population (p < 0.05) and supermarket count were positively associated (p < 0.001), and median household income negatively associated (P < 0.001), with corner store count. Translational efforts should be informed by these findings, which might influence the success of future interventions and policies in both rural and urban contexts.

The WI's rural retailing and markets 1915–1939: a First World War legacy

The Women's Institute Movement was set up under the auspices of the Agricultural Organisation Society in 1915 to improve the food supply during the Great War. The Women's Institutes encouraged food saving and preservation. This article draws attention to the rural retailing opportunities and markets that were established by the WI in wartime and continued to develop in the inter-war period, assisted by grants from the Carnegie Trust in the 1930s. The WI established sales tables, depots and markets that enabled smallholders, cottage gardeners and allotment holders to find financially non-exploitative retail opportunities for their produce. Initially this produce came from their gardens, allotments and smallholdings, but in time preserves, baking craftwork, jam, cakes, toys, knitted toys and garments and even a wedding trousseau were ordered or sold through these various WI retail outlets. The markets were not restricted to WI members and often sold work produced by small­holders, the disabled and ex-servicemen. Furthermore they were seen as an example of co-operative marketing that could prove useful in preventing food waste and helping rural households to survive in wartime and later during the economic crisis of the 1930s. This article suggests that these retail opportunities were of significance to rural women as a chance to earn much needed cash and in placing a value on domestic labour. They, like the WI, were a legacy of the First World War.

Squire, shopkeeper and staple food: the reciprocal relationship between the country house and the village shop in the late Georgian period

Rural communities have historically been viewed as synonymous with agricultural processes and a dependence upon the land. This tendency to filter rural life through the perspective of agricultural interest has obscured the vital role of rural retailers within such communities who have been similarly overlooked in studies of retailing in favour of their urban counterparts. The notion of rural self-sufficiency disguises the role of the village shopkeeper in the provision of necessities, particularly perishable goods like food and drink, the purchase of which is too often presumed and rarely expanded upon or quantified. Therefore very little is known about rural supply networks and, more specifically, the interaction and flow of goods between the country house and the village shop. Drawing on a wealth of evidence on the purchasing habits of a rural lesser gentry family in Bedfordshire, themselves a rather neglected social group, this study aims to reveal the mutually beneficial relationship between the country squire (in the daily process of sustaining a large household) and his village suppliers (eager to fulfil his requirements and retain his patronage) at the end of the Georgian period. The findings shed light on village life and society, providing a valuable insight into the complex, intimate and often mutually beneficial relationships that existed in rural communities.

Understanding Rural Retailer at the Base of the Fortune Pyramid

The literature in the field of rural marketing has paid little attention to intra-rural transaction. However, approaches towards inclusive marketing and rural market development are incomplete without clarity on rural to rural transaction. In this article an attempt has been made to understand the rural to rural transaction in the context of rural retail units. Identification of the supportive features, appreciation of organizational limitations of the business, and design of alternative revenue options were found as three strategies adopted by rural retailers to build a profitable enterprise. Compatibility and desirability of the revenue alternatives have been discussed to be the indicators determining the importance of each of these strategies. Implications are discussed both for commercial ventures involved in rural marketing as well as for agencies concerned with the design and implementation of income generating programmes in rural areas.

Outshopping in rural periodic markets: a retailing opportunity

Purpose– The study seeks to understand the influences on the prevalence of rural retailing institution of periodic markets. It examines the influence of access to and population of the location on the performance of periodic markets and their effect on the competition between periodic markets and local rural retail stores.Design/methodology/approach– Simultaneous cross-sectional study on census data is used to understand changes in performance of periodic markets in the context of growth in retail stores.Findings– The superior performance of local retail shop compared to outshopping in periodic markets is contrary to observation in literature developed in the context of urban outshopping.Practical implications– Retail chains need to develop a separate program for location of outlets that serve rural areas as access influences retail performance. In rural areas marketers can use traditional periodic markets in addition to conventional retail store given the limited inter-format retail competition.Originality/value– This is one of the few studies to explicitly examine periodic markets as a retail format. Outshopping is studied in the context of growth in local retail stores unlike earlier studies in the urban context where the local stores exhibit reduced sales.

The impact of retail establishments in hinterlands on the export role of retail establishments in rural places

Rural retail trade industries can serve an export function for and contribute to the economic growth of a rural place. The importance of a retail trade industry to the economy of a rural place depends on its market area. Since those market areas often extend into a place’s hinterlands, retail trade can effectively have an export component for the place itself. Yet empirical determination of the export role of a rural retail trade industry has been historically confounded by data limitations which limit testing for and identification of an industry’s market area. Using geographic information system tools to define variables for differing driving distances (as contrasted with circles defined by Euclidean distance) from a place, this paper tests for the market areas of seven retail trade industries in rural places and for the impact of retail trade in hinterlands on those market areas. This paper contributes to the relevant literature in three ways. First, it tests formally for a retail industry’s “market area driving time.” Prior articles which have incorporated distance into their analyses have not generally tested for the actual travel times more appropriate for such analyses. Second, it finds that not undertaking such testing might produce misleading results regarding the relationship between a place and the hinterlands in its market areas. Third, the regression results suggest subtlety in the export nature of rural retail trade, with some industries losing their export nature when competing businesses appear in hinterlands (Weak Export Retail industries) and other industries retaining their export nature under those circumstances (Strong Export Retail industries).

Assessing Transaction Cost to Describe Scope of the Firm in Emerging Farm Supply Chain in India: The Case of ITC E-Chaupal

This paper aims to describe the implication for transaction costs for agricultural marketing channel structure and outline a model of vertical coordination in agriculture. Considering new ways of assessing the true cost of conducting business is an important step towards improving system and reducing such costs. This is the question of appropriate scope of the corporation. The corporation should leverage its resources into every business in which it can create value. 262 The paper is based on recent work done by the author for the Indian agribusiness supply chain (Rakesh 2004). The rationale for undertaking work of this sort stems from two main objectives. First is a general dissatisfaction with the way economist have approached their study of vertical coordination in the broader framework of political economy (Sukhpal 2000) and others. The second perspective from which this work has emerged is the belief that a sensible coordination of the theories from the institutional economics, supply chain management and relationship marketing can be applied fruitfully to the study of agri food and agri commodity supply chains. When the emphasis within most agricultural system and most predominantly Indian agriculture is changing from policy dependence to more market orientation and when technological and structural changes suggest a need for a more analytical and dynamic approach. The objective of this paper is to illustrate the possibility of using a series of studies from Institutional economics as a basis of detailed diagnostic investigation of individual relationship within agricultural supply chain systems and to explore the implications for vertical coordination and integration. This study is a need to bridge the gap in the study of agricultural supply chains by concentrating on relationship between contractual organizational forms and their strategic viability. We will thus explore the scope of corporation in a strategic context. The rest of the paper concentrates closely on the nature of such contractual forms. It starts by considering recent antecedent research from the institutional economics and then discusses approaches to evaluate vertical coordination before applying one approach to the assessment of ITC e-choupal sourcing and rural retailing system. It studies the E-Chaupal experiment from transaction costs perspective and studies its scope within the context of the nature of it‘ corporate strategy.

An exploratory study of counterfeit purchases among rural bottom of pyramid customers in India

This study offers insights into counterfeiting purchases by focusing on consumers in a rural BOP in India. More specifically, effects of individual characteristics like consumers’ demographic factors and psychographic factors are examined and the various products related characteristics and situational characteristics are explored. Qualitative data was collected in the form of 43 interviews of rural BOP customers to understand counterfeit phenomenon. Results suggest that rural BOP people do not perceive any adverse social consequence and risk, neither performance nor financial, while buying counterfeits. Further, in this study, besides gender and age, counterfeit purchases were found to be affected by various other factors like value consciousness, type of products purchased, and type of rural retailer chosen by customers. Previous studies in Asian countries and among economically advantaged populations, had not related their findings to rural BOP segment. This paper entails useful implications for marketers and offers specific recommendations for management, as well as the scope for future research is presented.

Rural Retailing: Challenges to Traditional Handicrafts

ABSTRACT The expansion of tourism into villages has provided craft traders of Kerala with significant opportunities in rural retailing. However, village artisans with limited resources fail to reach global consumers. This study aims to clarify the challenges faced by rural craft cooperatives in selecting retail channels for their products. Testing the hypotheses at two levels using primary and secondary data, the author identifies the retail channel that offers the maximum returns to producers and satisfaction to consumers. The results indicate that those cooperatives owning exclusive retail channels guarantee sustainable market relationships for rural artisans.

Creating an Educational Partnership Environment Between Rural Retailers and Graduate Students

Creating an Educational Partnership Environment Between Rural Retailers and Graduate Students

Organized Retailing in Rural Areas

Even after independence, Indian economy is still being dominated by agriculture sector and the major reasons behind this: (i) its contribution in food grain production which is consumed by both rural and urban market and (ii) self-employment. Rural India accounts for roughly 70% of the population where 6, 38,000 villages and 593 districts consist of 742 million people.15% of rural population lives in 20,000 large “non-urban” areas with population more than 5,000 people. 63% of rural population lives in villages of 1000 to 5000 people. Remaining 3, 90,000 villages have fewer than 1000 people accounting for 22% of the population. There are some major players in rural retailing to cater the need of Rural Population. They are (1) DSCL - Hariyali Kisan Bazar (2) ITC - e-choupal and Chaupal Sagar (3) Godrej - Aadhaar (4) Kisan Seva Kendra (5) HUL Project – Shakti.

Assessing the Impacts of Zimbabwe’s Agricultural Vouchers Input Program

Using data from ICRISAT 2010/11 household and fertilizer retailer surveys, the study reveals that open vouchers enhance farmers input choice. The targeting of vulnerable farmers was efficient in selecting, households with less livestock ownership and those affected by HIV/AIDS. The use of open vouchers enabled retailers to sale agricultural inputs, boost revenue and link them to suppliers. The use of open voucher is preferable in areas where retailer’s infrastructure and mobile telephone network coverage is good. Timely payment of retailers and suppliers is necessary to encourage their willingness to participate in the program. Risk bearing options like wholesaler insurance are critical to ensure wholesalers are compensated in the event that agro-inputs are not purchased. Credit facilities specifically meant for retailers to stock and trade agricultural inputs will be useful. Programs and policies that enable farmers to access credit to buy inputs should also be put in place. A well planned voucher system links commercial retail channels and has multiplier effects to the society. Experiences from the PRP input program demonstrated that voucher system, as an alternative to direct input distribution, is workable in the Zimbabwe situation and can be adequately supported by suppliers and rural retailers. Voucher programs have the potential to support retail linkage and there is need for increasing more stakeholders, such as seed and fertilizer companies, and wholesalers.

Validation of food store environment secondary data source and the role of neighborhood deprivation in Appalachia, Kentucky

BackgroundBased on the need for better measurement of the retail food environment in rural settings and to examine how deprivation may be unique in rural settings, the aims of this study were: 1) to validate one commercially available data source with direct field observations of food retailers; and 2) to examine the association between modified neighborhood deprivation and the modified retail food environment score (mRFEI).MethodsSecondary data were obtained from a commercial database, InfoUSA in 2011, on all retail food outlets for each census tract. In 2011, direct observation identifying all listed food retailers was conducted in 14 counties in Kentucky. Sensitivity and positive predictive values (PPV) were compared. Neighborhood deprivation index was derived from American Community Survey data. Multinomial regression was used to examine associations between neighborhood deprivation and the mRFEI score (indicator of retailers selling healthy foods such as low-fat foods and fruits and vegetables relative to retailers selling more energy dense foods).ResultsThe sensitivity of the commercial database was high for traditional food retailers (grocery stores, supermarkets, convenience stores), with a range of 0.96-1.00, but lower for non-traditional food retailers; dollar stores (0.20) and Farmer’s Markets (0.50). For traditional food outlets, the PPV for smaller non-chain grocery stores was 38%, and large chain supermarkets was 87%. Compared to those with no stores in their neighborhoods, those with a supercenter [OR 0.50 (95% CI 0.27. 0.97)] or convenience store [OR 0.67 (95% CI 0.51, 0.89)] in their neighborhood have lower odds of living in a low deprivation neighborhood relative to a high deprivation neighborhood.ConclusionThe secondary commercial database used in this study was insufficient to characterize the rural retail food environment. Our findings suggest that neighborhoods with high neighborhood deprivation are associated with having certain store types that may promote less healthy food options.