Exploring Experiential Marketing in the Rural Market

The new buzz word in the market is “experiential marketing” – using one or more of the human senses to market services and products. The concept is really quite simple and honestly very brilliant; it involves not only giving customers an opportunity to engage and interact with brands, products and services but also helps them build an emotional connection thereby enabling them to make a better purchasing decision. Today, experiential marketing has been used quite successfully in urban market contexts; however, my focus in this article is on exploiting this new marketing model to explore the rural markets in India where the customer is not educated and has a different mindset than those in the cities.


Why the rural market? Well, most of the BOP today lives in a “media dark” zone, meaning they do not have access to radios, TVs, etc. Since, traditional marketing models fail to reach this target experiential marketing can step in and broaden the horizons for brand promotions and consumer education. In addition, the real life experience of touching, tasting, feeling, relating and familiarizing oneself with a new product that the customer is likely investing in for the first time, creates a unique influence on the buyer. On the far opposite end of the "trust" spectrum lie media advertisements which pitch features and benefits. There is little reason for consumers to trust yet another over-exaggerated sales pitch, let alone base their purchase decision on it. It is here that the experiential marketing fits in.


How has experiential marketing made its mark? In the rural markets, usage of promotional tools like kiosks, stalls, free sampling, etc. has increased tremendously in the last decade. Consumers are now demanding testing and tasting of products before buying even a pack of biscuits or tea. Some methods that marketers have employed for satiating this consumer curiosity are by providing samples at the tea stalls at the Melas and Haats (weekly markets in the villages). The smell of the tea accompanied by the taste from a free sample forms a part of experiential marketing luring them towards the products.


A well demonstrated implementation of experiential marketing was seen in Mahindra’s promotion tactic for its Hy Tec tractor brand. These tractors are strong hydraulic tractors aiming to help farmers sow the fields. To demonstrate this technology to the farmers the company engaged them through a technique in which sensors were fixed to the hydraulic and a large LCD monitor was placed for the farmers, which captured the movement of the cultivator on an ECG graph. This activity was easily understood and remembered by the farmers, thereby creating a band impact resulting in significantly increased sales for the company.


One way to exponentially increase the impact of experiential marketing is to combine it with word of mouth marketing. When the consumer is enthralled by his experiences with the brand, he will certainly share these with his friends and family. The results can be truly astounding.
The Aravind eye care system is a prime example of successfully marrying experiential marketing with word of mouth marketing. Aravind eye care systems, largest eye care facility in the world, conducts more than 1500 eye camps where the poor are tested for vision problems and those needing help are admitted to hospitals where the sanitation and medical care is optimum. These camps not only enable brand recognition but also facilitate to build credibility. The word of mouth in this case is extensive enabling to cover a larger target customer base than what traditional media could have covered.

Keeping in mind the above examples we can say that there is a series of conscious steps that the rural consumers take to "filter" down the set of possible choices and then make the decision based on the comfort level afforded by their own "contexts." And the factor that has the greatest weight in a rural consumer's purchase decision is their own experience with the specific product. It is the difference between telling the rural people about features or benefits within the confines of the thirty-second TV spot and letting them experience it and get their own "a-ha!" event.

Courtesy:
Dhwani Thakkar
SCMHRD 2009-11