Articles by S L Rao

An Introductory Note S L Rao MARKETING is becoming widely identified as the biggest problem of Indian business today. The term is used to mean different things by different people, but whether it is a recession- hit industry, or one which was set up as a monopoly but is now effected by competition, a "sick" unit or one in the small-scale, cottage, village or home sector, or any other sector like fisheries or forestry, the common problem seems to be that of finding a market for products. Almost all discussion and writing on marketing in India draws heavily on the experience of large or organised industry. The articles which follow in this Review of Management are no exception, but that does not make them any the less rele- vant. To the ordinary man, the marketing function appears to be a simple one. This is because every element in it affects his daily life and he has views on all its aspects.

How does a company pick rural markets for promotion of its products? We cannot, in this context, speak of the whole of India, nor even of the whole of a state sometimes. What we need to do is to focus attention on specific areas of opportunity. This may seem a simple problem, hut since the spending of large sums of money on advertising and distribution hinges on it, this is a major decision for any company to take.

The object of test marketing is to study a miniature of the national market. This implies that the marketer should have a clear idea of the nature of his market, and should have done initial consumer research.