The Role of Spurious Products in Rural Retailing-A Study

When taking the subject of rural marketing in India, everyone related it to the enormous size and demand base as it brings huge opportunities to marketers. Huge revenue is generated in this field owing to the majority of population residing in rural areas. This brings about the threat of counterfeits and pass-offs, the knowledge of which is of utmost importance to the consumers in this part who tend to go about the purchasing based on the look, design and many more features of a brand. Recently, researchers have paid increasing attention to rural marketing, but the rural marketing domain has unique characteristics that require industry specific knowledge development. Marketers in this area face unique challenges in every aspect of rural marketing. Rural marketing, from the point of view of spurious products is an under researched area within the rural marketing discipline. The authors attempt to identify various issues relating to spurious products by examining previously published research in conjunction with the data collected in rural Karnataka state, relying on survey data collected from 310 retailers and 1,620 rural consumers across Karnataka state, the authors find that multi-brand wholesalers, suppliers are the key players behind the whole issue and examine the various methods to reform situations by offering various suggestions based on this research. Rural marketers can use this detailed discussion to fight effectively against counterfeits and pass-offs.