2. 2. New product designs A close observation of rural household items indicates the importance of redesigning or modifying the products. The manufacturing and marketing men can think in terms of new product designs specially meant for rural areas keeping their lifestyles in view. 3. Sturdy products Sturdiness of a product either in terms of weight or appearance is an important fact for rural consumers. The product meant for rural areas should be sturdy enough to stand rough handling and storage. People in rural areas like bright flashy colours such as red, blue, green etc., and feel that products with such colours are sturdy but they are more concerned with the utility of the item also.

3. 4. Brand name The rural consumers are more concerned with the utility of products. The brand name awareness in the rural areas is fairly high.A brand name or logo is very essential for rural consumers for it can be easily remembered. FW15-MARKETING MIX INTRODUCTION Marketing mix allows you to combine all the marketing tools in order to sell your product. Objectives: The objectives of this lesson about marketing mix is to give you: -The tools you need for establishing your detailed marketing plan and forecasting your sales. 1. Challenge 2. Product 3. Place 4. Price 5. Promotion 6. Sales strategy 7. Do it yourself 8. Coaching

4. 1-CHALLENGE You have got a rough idea about the market situation and the possible positioning of your product. Of course, it's far to be sufficient. Now, you must write your detailed planning. It means that brainstorming is ended and that you have to go to the specifics in examining and checking all the hypothesis you had made in the preceding chapters. You will use the marketing mix. -Defn: Marketing mix is the combination of elements that you will use to market your product. There are four elements: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. They are called the four Ps of the marketing mix.

5. . Some people think that the four Ps are old fashionable and propose a new paradigm: The four Cs! Product becomes customer needs; Place becomes convenience, price is replaced by cost to the user, promotion becomes communication. It looks like a joke but the Cs is more customer-oriented

8. 33-The image The place of sale influences the perception of your product. Consequently, you must pay attention to the choice of your outlets: wholesalers and retailers. If you sell products for every one, a mass distribution through the supermarket will be probably the best issue. On the contrary, if you sell fine products, you have to choice fine shops and beautiful people to sell them. In the fun board case, you should have better to emphasize on the image and to look for fashionable shops and people. 4-PRICE Price means the pricing strategy you will use . You have already fixed, as an hypothesis a customer price fitted to your customer profile but you will have now to bargain it with the wholesalers and retailers. Do not be foolish: They know better the market than you and you have to listen their advices. 41-Pricing strategies In fact, you have to choose between three strategies: -Competitive pricing: If your product is sold at the lowest price regarding all your competitors, you are practicing competitive pricing. Sometimes, competitive pricing

9. -Cost-plus-profit: It means that you add the profit you need to your cost. It is also called cost-orientated strategy and is mainly used by the big contractor of public works. The authority may have access to the costing data and should like to check if the profit added to the cost is not too high. In fact, this strategy is only good for a business whom the customers are public collectivities or government agencies. -Value pricing: It means that you base your prices on the value you deliver to customers. For example, when a new technology has a very large success, you can charge high prices to the customer. This practice is also called skimming . It is easy when you are in the introductory phase of the product life cycle. Value pricing is also common in luxury items. Sometimes, the higher the price, the more you sell : Fashionable clothing or restaurants for snob people. Of course value pricing is limited by the price elasticity as you have already learnt in Economics.

11. -Definition: The function of promotion is to affect the customer behavior in order to close a sale. -Advertisement: It takes many forms: TV, radio, internet, newspapers, yellow pages, and so on. You have to take notice about three important notions: Reach is the percentage of the target market which is affected by your advertisement. For ex: if you advertise on radio you must know how many people belonging to your segment can be affected. Frequency is the number of time a person is exposed to your message. It is said that a person must be exposed seven times to the message before to be aware of it. Reach*frequency gives the gross rating point. You have to evaluate it before any advertisement campaign. Message: Sometimes, it is called a creative. Anyway, the message must: get attraction, capture interest, create desire and finally require action that is to say close the sale.

12. -Promotion: Promotion includes three topics: advertisement, public relations, and sales promotions. -Public relations: Public relations are more subtle and rely mainly on your own personality. -Sales promotion : It includes fair trades, coupons, discounts and are linked to the sales strategy. 6-SALES STRATEGY Sales bring in the money. Salesmen are directly exposed to the pressure of finding prospects, making deals, beating competition and bringing money. You have first to learn some definitions used by the MBA lingo:

13. 61-Definitions : A lead is a person who has been identified as a prospect. A prospect is a potential customer. An account is a customer that often buys from the company. A national account is a very big customer On the contrary, active selling involves locating customers and persuading them to buy. Inside sales refers to selling done mainly by phone or by internet. Outside sales involves getting appointment to meet customers at their home. Home cold calling means to phone people you do not know. Hard sell means to use of high pressures upon the prospect. 62-The sales process: It depends heavily on the buying process . It includes prospecting and persuading.

14. Prospecting involves finding the leads and presenting the product. After making contact, the salesman must show that the product solves a customer's problem. He must also answer two questions : - Has the prospect a need or an interest in the product ? - Does the prospect have the money to buy the product ? If the prospect does not meet these criteria, you have better to move on to the next prospect ! Persuading and authority are often necessary to close a sale. The salesman's approach is often to rise questions in order to lead the prospect to a logical conclusion : I must buy now. -The sale organization: The two major issues are to recruit salesmen or to organize a franchising or or multi-level market

15. If you recruit the salesmen: -You should determine the size of the sales force: It must cover the customer segment. A poor coverage is an invitation to competitors. Remember the production possibility frontier to determine your maximum sales force. Alignment by territory divides the market into geographical areas such as counties or cities and specializes each salesman in an area. Alignment by product specializes each salesman in a product. Alignment by customer specializes each salesman in a customer (it means that the customer must be a national account).

16. The sale organization

18. Rural Products classification Rural Products FMCG Cons durable Agri-foods Services