Effective marketing communication is one of the biggest challenges of rural marketing because of poor media penetration in rural markets. As a solution to this problem this paper attempts to highlight the possibility of the most traditional mode of communication i.e., word of mouth communication for effective rural marketing. It tries to justify the role of word of mouth communication by discussing constraints of other conventional and non-conventional promotion tools in rural market. It also covers the various ways through which positive word of mouth can be built in rural market.
Though it is too difficult and more expensive to reach out to this populace, rural marketing is the flavor of the season. There are 60,000 villages, 700 million people and their per capita income is less than Rs. 50 a day. As far as rural marketers are concerned the main issue is that rural population is isolated in terms of access to information, materials and markets. In almost all product categories urban market more or less has reached a saturation stage so that markets have moved towards rural market. But rural markets are not that easy to reach because it has been characterized by some problems like low per capita disposable, large number of daily wage earners, uncertain monsoon, fluctuating demand with season, poor infrastructure facilities and the major problem is inaccessibility to modern advertising media.
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