review
Unique and Unitary Marketing Strategies for Emerging Economies:
Message from India Ramana Acharyulu
Professor, Indus Business Academy, Bangalore Vaishali Agarwal
Associate Professor, Indus Business Academy, Bangalore
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Abstract
India is an emerging economy comprising of multi-layered, complex market segments, besieged with infrastructural and other geo-spatial challenges. Among these layers, exists the rural layer, whose markets are underdeveloped and underserved and largely remains the base of pyramid layer – with large numbers of micro-entrepreneurs, farmers, producers comprising a large producer base for production and marketing of several organized and unorganised goods and services. It also happens to be the largest consumer market in Indian economy. It offers immense potential for growth driven by emerging aspirational mode of lifestyle, emerging access to markets, goods and services and technologies in Indian society. However, rural marketing remains the biggest challenge for the innumerable manufacturers and marketers in this country. As a major proportion of population of India belongs to this layer of the economy, it continues to daunt both the marketers and policy makers to look for the ways to connect it; service it and interlink it with other layers for country’s sustainable growth.
In the last three decades, millions of self-help groups and many producers’ enterprises came up, to address the challenges of marketing and creating
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market linkages in rural India. Some of them succeeded and others continue to evolve to address the needs of the rural economy. When the successes are studied and documented, their strategies showcase some unique ways in which they have developed successful marketing strategies. This paper makes an attempt to study the evolution of some of the marketing strategies where millions of individuals came together for collective benefit, rewriting the focus of corporate endeavours towards uncounted numbers of people as drivers of economy. Such an exercise, leads to construct a model for unitary marketing strategies vis-a-vis the conventional binary marketing strategies of Indian businesses.
This paper attempts articulation of the concept of unitary marketing strategies with the help of three unique marketing organizations, Amul, ITC and Patanjali, as they evolved and matured their business models and demonstrate its significance. The methodology of examining these three cases to offer a macro perspective on the evolution of their marketing strategies – starting from creating market linkages to building vertical integration and subsequently towards the creation of a unitary marketing strategy that connects the millions of producers and developing them as consumers for the very goods and services that they were instrumental in producing, helps appreciate the development of an integrated eco-system where producers, marketers, consumers, and retailers all come together to unify the economy. Even though it differs from the conventional research and developing empirical models to argue the presence and significance of a theoretical framework and a business model, it helps capture the macro perspectives of strategy making and execution to deliver the strategic intent.
Key words: Emerging economy, rural markets, self-help groups, unique and unitary marketing strategies, market linkages and vertical integration.
Introduction and Invitation: India is a land of diversity, diversity which cannot be explained in terms of culture, language, religion, region alone. It is a heterogeneous mass which represents diversity in consumption, compatibility, affordability and accessibility. In this paper we have conceptualized India as an emerging economy which could be understood as a multi- layered, complex overlay of market segments, besieged with infrastructural and other geo- spatial challenges. There exists a layer which is deprived of enough developmental exposure and thus remains disconnected, remote and underdeveloped as compared to its urban counterpart. This layer is often referred to as rural market where a significant proportion of Indian population resides. And another layer
which represents a progressive consumption class having access to world class goods and services and largely confined to the urban and suburban parts of the country, but extends into rural India too, through overlaps of upper middle class that traverses across different geographies, cultures and markets. The rural layer lacks consumption sophistication but it offers a great potential for growth, thanks to aggressive promotion and encouragement given to aspirational mode of lifestyle, access and acquisition of goods and services that are associated with good life and accomplishment, in Indian society. This is one of the few critical reasons many multinational corporations and Indian marketing organisations look upon at this layer as huge market opportunity. Chattopadhyay S. & Sarkar A.K. (2011),
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explored the use of technology and pragmatic frugal innovations to penetrate deep into the rural markets. These markets not only provide potential for sales but also act as a source of resources and potential points of origin for goods and services demanded worldwide. It was expected to offer alternatives to create fortune for the population at the bottom of the pyramid, following Prahalad (2004). Sheth Jagdish N. (2011), stated that while marketing in emerging markets the marketers need to focus on market development rather than market orientation alone. He also suggested public policy initiatives to be driven by purpose than by compliance and crisis. The role of organizations to develop products and services to meet the needs of emerging economies like India is crucial but at the same time their ability to develop these markets is even more important. As a major population of our country belongs to the core layers of the economy, it is imperative for both the marketers and policy makers to look for the ways to connect it with other layers for sustainable growth. Emergence of Self-Help groups as a new institutional form of enterprising During the last three decades a multitude of autonomous, independent production organizations which are commonly referred as self-help groups (SHGs) came up across the country, thanks to highly motivated and change seeking voluntary movement in the country. According to Lakshmi K. & Ramachandran S. (2017), SHGs are organizations formed by the voluntary associations of under-privileged section of the society to improve their socio- economic conditions. These associations are recognized at international levels and a variety of schemes by government of India such as Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas, Integrated Rural Development Programme and Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana have identified SHGs as an approach for alleviating poverty. Magdum A.S. (2015), reported that various state governments are involved in prompt implementation of the self-help groups. They
have acknowledged the fact that SHGs have become an important feature of a planned economy. SHGs help in unifying the different economic layers of a society by working as an engine of self-employment for less amount of capital investment. Mishra Bibhu (2018), around 100 million families were covered by 8.5 million SHGs with savings deposit of approx. INR 161 billion under NRLM poverty alleviation program. These SHGs were engaged in suitable business activities and have played an important role in enabling financial inclusion in rural areas. They and their promoter organisations (earlier days, the voluntary Organisations, and in recent times, NGOS and Social Enterprises that promote SHGs) consider product design, development and positioning as critical marketing decisions while designing marketing strategies. A major challenge SHGs come across is how to market their products to the masses. Another challenge is to build market linkages between SHGs, marketing organisations and potential customer groups. Successful SHGs pursue organising marketing enterprises and they in turn pursue the tasks of production and supply of the raw materials/ work-in-process and final product to be marketed through creating market linkages with up-country markets. They also take the responsibility of last mile delivery and retailing of products needed by their members in their villages to help in creating consumers and development of brand equity for the products thus retailed in villages. Very few marketers attempted such end-to-end marketing activities and succeeded. Authors argue that such enterprises succeeded in evolving unitary marketing strategies, attaining cost competitiveness as well as penetrating through the socio- economic layers. Indian Marketing Strategies and their dependence on Rural Supply Chains Conventionally, businesses used binary approach for marketing; where, the role of self-help groups, individual artisans/farmers and other rural producers was that of the tier
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three or tier four level suppliers, forming the base layer and build foundation of bricks and mortar of the long supply chains that manufacturing and marketing functions needed. Such creation of supply chains helped taking the movement of raw-materials and basic products from the rural hinterlands to the urban markets and international and global markets, leaving the rural population bereft of consuming value added, branded, quality products at their end. They remained supplier base only. Unitary Marketing Strategies In this paper the authors propose a contrasting idea of unitary marketing strategies. The unitary marketing strategies refer to unifying the production from autonomous, independent, producer organizations and reach back to the millions of last mile consumers who happen to be residing in the remotest parts of our country. The term also attempts to refer to a series of approaches that move away from linear strategies that link producers with consumers to non- linear strategies that identify co-existence of producers and consumers within and alongside and articulate the closing of a 360 degree loop connecting to the same set of people who function as producers as well as form a majority of the consumer groups too. Paradigm Shift from Binary Marketing Strategies to Unitary Strategies Unitary strategies also find analogy in the concept of two-sided networks. These networks can be found in many industries, sharing the space with traditional product and service offerings. The difference between traditional value chain and two-sided network can be explained in terms of the movement of value. In case of traditional value chain the company attributed costs to its left and revenues to its right while in a two-sided network or in a unitary value chain both left and the right of the company there exists cost and revenue i.e. the producers’ groups on one hand incur cost of development and at the same time they serve as a last mile delivery and consumer groups. Thus, company can
collect revenue from them (Eisenmann T., Parker G. and Alstyne Marshall W.V., 2006). However, it requires a specific study to relate binary marketing strategies to two-sided networks. The question at large is, whether such an understanding is truly representing the organisation’s strategic pursuits and if such arrangements address the strategic intent of what needs to be served to whom in what form and function. This remains one question that one needs to examine at depth and follow it up as a succeeding research to the present paper. Research Objectives This paper aims to study the evolution of marketing in emerging economies like India, where the last seven decades saw a continued development of rural areas, cultivating the rural producer communities and artisan communities to build a supplier-base for manufacturing and marketing firms. The advent of different forms of people’s collectives – SHGs, Mutually Aided Cooperatives, Micro-finance institutions, and social enterprises focused not only on the production capabilities of rural communities as suppliers, but also in cultivating them as patrons of the products and services that are otherwise offered only to the urban consumer markets. A confluence of supply chains has begun to eliminate the divergence between evolution of rural India as a market and as a source of supply to urban markets. The two distinct strategies are to be unified into a singular and uniquely prepositioned marketing strategies, giving a never before competitive advantage to the firms that lead the process. A snapshot study of self- help groups, their role, and of approaches to unite them with corporate supply chains is conducted in this paper to articulate the advent of the unitary marketing strategies. Eric Kacou (2011), working with African women recognises that the base of pyramid has productive and entrepreneurial capabilities, as well as representing a massive purchasing force with significant unmet needs for goods and services. He emphasises that if
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the productivity of this group is harnessed, the impact could be the game changer needed to once and for all alter the dynamic whereby the majority of humanity remains poor. Kacou argues for building Archimedean mind-sets to build Base of Pyramid enterprises, which seek to break the survival trap and pursue double loop learning to change our mind-sets and take actions that go outside established patterns. The authors attempt at finding such initiatives in the organisations studied and argue that the unitary marketing strategies pursue changing mind-sets to redefine the opportunities for the base of pyramid enterprises. Research Methodology Khairool Noor (2008), stated that there are times in social research, where the focus of a researcher is to gain insights, to discover and to interpret than hypothesis testing. Qualitative case based research approach is suitable for these kinds of research objectives. This paper will conduct qualitative research based on case study method. Micro cases of different organizations across the sectors and geographies will be discussed to identify the strategies for operating successfully in emerging economies. Some of the cases covered for this study include a) ‘Amul’, a globally recognised saga of micro level producers enterprises offering the first break-through in the country in creating robust supply chain network of a perishable commodity called milk, and use the same supply chain network to offer reverse flow of professional and modern veterinary and human healthcare to these villages with un- paralleled last-mile delivery mechanisms developed in creating the first globally recognised unitary marketing strategy; b) ‘Patanjali’ a leading Swadeshi and Ayurveda company which has attempted disruption in the tightly held markets of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector by some of the leading multinational organizations – by creating unitary marketing strategies, c) eChoupals of ITC Limited that worked to remove inefficiencies of markets for chosen commodities and d) Mangaldeep range of
FMCG Products of the same company, where the focus of the company and its supply chain partners was to evolve unitary marketing strategies to build market linkages, create new FMCG markets and create feed-forward and feedback mechanisms for grass-root level producers and offer markets for grass-root level, remotely stationed and geographically thinly and widely spread micro-customer segments for different FMCG product categories within the country. Findings and Implications An analysis and discussion on successful marketing strategies which are both unique and unitary in nature will be made based on the case-analysis. This paper makes an attempt to study the evolution of unique and unitary marketing strategies from pre-reform i.e. 1980s era to 2015 onwards post-reform era. The evolution of marketing strategies from vertical integration to creating market linkages and towards the development of an integrated eco-system where producers, marketers, consumers, and retailers all come together to unify is discussed in this paper. The cases mentioned above are analysed as given in below paragraphs. Amul in 1970-80s, Pre-Reform Era: In seventies, Amul played the role of vertical integrator by bringing the farmers and milkmen and consumers together, by bridging all the supply chain links. It started its operations in 1946, with barely twenty farmers pooling around 250 litres milk a day and processing and supplying the same to Bombay Milk Scheme. It rose to 970 villages and 100,000 members by early 1980s, and supplying a million litres of milk per day from these villages. Around 705 of the members are women, tending to dairying in these villages and handling 90-95% of all the milk produced and supplied. Those were the days when farmers, though supplying raw milk, were deprived of the processed dairy products including pasteurised milk, other processed dairy products as the distribution and logistics systems as well as retailing services to the rural areas were neither available nor
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serviced. Many of the women milk producers were not able to provide milk to their own kids just to earn some extra money. Sensing a need to compensate for the sacrifices made by rural mothers, but, not yet becoming ready to build rural marketing systems, Amul felt, it could address the mother and child nutrition through a social responsibility initiative, in an era when CSR was not even coined, and took the task of producing and supplying a balanced nutrient based extruded snack food, called ‘Amul Ghatiya’, (later renamed Balamul), at a nominal price to all women members of milk cooperatives. This was done so that Amul attempted to fulfil the much needed child nutrition gap in villages where supply of processed milk was not contemplated for those markets. Many village milk coops used to sell a small quantity of the raw milk procured, to the village consumers, as the coop was required to dispose-off the milk samples taken for milk quality testing, once done, as they didn’t have any other means to handle the sampled milk. However, the quantum of milk thus sold, and the extent of its meeting the village milk consumption demand was very small, and was not studied as a concerted marketing activity by Amul in those days. Very little documentation exists to argue its significance as an alternative to marketing of processed milk in rural areas. However, the attempts of Amul in 70s and 80s, to address the deficiencies of milk supply in the villages where milk coops exist, by providing a nutritional supplement in the form of Balamul at a highly subsidised price to the members was noted as a highly successful rural development strategy in rural areas (Ruth Heredia, 1997). The second major intervention of Amul in creating a unitary marketing strategy was built around production and supply of Amul Dana, the cattle-feed produced and supplied to every milk farmer, through using a highly acclaimed reverse logistics system through the same supply chain network that handled procurement of milk from a thousand villages from every district in Gujarat. (Deshpande et al, 2016 and 2017, Goldberg, Cornell, 2013).
Amul, working for forward vertical integration of the milk procurement, processing and marketing from village level to district to state and national level, simultaneously took up the task of building backward integration processes too. Major initiatives in this regard were, to offer veterinary services and animal healthcare and to offer nutrient cattle-feed. For this purpose, round-the-clock mobile veterinary vans and teams were setup, medicines supplies were managed and animal vaccines were discovered, produced and distributed, with the assistance of Government of India and National Dairy Development Board. A world class cattle-feed factory was set up to manufacture nutrient cattle-feed called Amul Dana, and each of these were supplied to every village and every coop member farmer, thus meeting all the needs of a milk producing farmer to produce milk and meeting all the needs of these farmers, to get the best remuneration for the milk and milk products round the year, gaining recognition by 1985, that it was one of the globally acknowledged two-way vertically integrated business, marketing quality inputs to farmers and marketing quality milk products to urban consumers across the country (Heredia, 1997, Mishra, Asokan, 2016) AMUL In 1990-2000s – post reform era: Though the initiatives started in mid-eighties, two major pursuits of Amul during the 90s in offering a highly responsible human healthcare service (through its CSR organisation, called Tribhuvandas Foundation), and building the retailing networks for the Amul products in the rural hinterlands stand out in creating a unitary marketing strategy. Each and every milk coop, is linked to the mobile health service vans, almost similarly designed and operated as the veterinary mobile vans, giving the much needed medical and health service to the families of milk coop members of the villages. The marketing strategy adopted by Amul in developing and promoting a highly focused liquid milk brand “Amul Taaza” in rural areas across the country as an alternative to
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the distribution of fresh milk. Amul Taaza, a brand initially crafted as a super brand, meant to be a convenience product for urban lifestyle consumers, became the answer to the lowly electrified, poorly equipped rural retailer’s prayer for processed milk. Amul taaza, met the needs of rural consumers, and rural milk retailers who couldn’t afford refrigeration and stocking of milk sachets without spoilage. Amul Taaza, developed using a Ultra Heat Treatment (UHT) technology to process milk and packing with another technology centric material, Tetra-pack, long shelf-life liquid milk, became an instant hit in remotest corners of the country, with Amul’s distribution networks working exclusive strategies to meet the milk demand in these hinterlands (Goldberg, Cornell, 2013). ITC Limited in 2000s: ITC’s ‘Mangaldeep- puja incense sticks’ is the fastest growing brand in its category with over 55% growth in 2011 over the previous year. The unique strategy adopted by Mangaldeep is that ‘these incense sticks are sourced from small scale/ cottage vendors from across the country, six of whom have received the ISO 9001 – 2000 certification – a first for any incense brand in India. (Itcportal.com, 2018). Mangaldeep, provides market linkages to the incense sticks producers by procuring from under-privileged women through self-help groups and small scale entrepreneurs. This enables sustainable livelihood for rural India in Orissa, Tripura and Bihar. ITC Initiatives: ITC’s Triple Bottom Line philosophy of every business contributing to the nation’s economic, environmental and social capital, has been translated into reality with the development of incense stick supply-chains. Mangaldeep agarbattis are manufactured by small scale and cottage units, providing livelihood opportunities for more than 7,000 people. Mangaldeep Agarbatti is manufactured at various centres across the country and standardized processes are followed to ensure the same quality across locations. ITC has partnered with ORMAS (Orissa Rural Development & Marketing
Society), an autonomous body under the Pachayat Raj in Odisha to encourage the women’s self-help groups to manufacture the incense sticks on a regular basis and ITC committing to market them. This initiative provided technical training to rural women & provides employment opportunities to over 4,000 rural women. Shared value creation: Assistance in Social Habilitation through Agarbatti (ASHA) was another initiative through which ITC provided training on rolling and preparing incense sticks with a provision of stipend and guaranteed buyers and payments. This programme covered approximately 16,000 women. Moreover, ITC helped to provide free access of primary education to the children and raised the standard of education by providing infrastructural support to the government schools (Sarmah and Rehman, 2016). Perhaps, an approach for sustainable livelihoods generation, preservation of natural capital along with shareholder value could be enhanced simultaneously (Porter & Kramer, 2011). Armed with consumer insights, excellent business processes, strong marketing and distribution network and investments in modern Research and Development (R&D), ITC competed fiercely in the domestic and global incense stick markets. The Mangaldeep case showcases the complex inter-linkages in developing unitary marketing strategies – a women’s self-help group promoting social enterprise, BISWA, was instrumental in looking for opportunities for the SHGS formed, to take their village level production activities, into entrepreneurial pursuits, and thus seek collaborative action along with two other likeminded organisations – ORMAS and ASHA, and use the collective strength to team up with ITC in order to build the Mangaldeep production network. A concerted effort by these four organisations lead to Odisha’s SHGs becoming consumers of technology driven Market intelligence system and part of Collaborative Planning and Forecasting Systems (CPFR), which, otherwise is found in only some sophisticated global
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supply chain driven enterprises. This lead, to village women becoming the core value adding rural processors and manufacturers, also becoming consumers of advanced technologies, information, and lastly, aspiration driven consumers, who seek to buy and use branded incense sticks in their homes. ITC-eChoupals: eChoupals, created and nurtured by ITC to build efficient markets for agricultural commodities and develop seamless supply chains, have been studied and recognised for their contribution in restructuring Indian Agri-supply chains and elimination of inefficiencies of commodity markets for soybean, coffee beans and other commodities. Once again, if the case of eChoupals is probed for the unitary marketing strategies, two very conspicuous features come to the fore. One, the flow of farmers’ agricultural production through the village farmlands to the international processing and marketing centres, and two, a fair and transparent system of pricing, payment, warehousing, transportation and value creation for raw agri-commodities for further value addition. The efforts of ITC eChoupals focused on the creation and evolution of a sophisticated technology consumer, while farmers’participation helped evolution of eChoupal networks as strong, efficient and farmer oriented market systems. A farmer, while working through eChoupal, evolves as a computer literate, adept in gauging and monitoring market information systems through accessing local and global prices, money markets and commodity markets, at the village. The skills of using intranet, internet and extranets to become competitive in global commodity trade in day-to-day life, initially by sanchalaks of eChoupals and later by individual farmer members changed the way markets function and become responsive. The farmers’ buy-in of regular weather forecasts, market arrivals and inter-market price movements pushed the conventional commodity markets to restructure their functioning.
More importantly, their use of analytics on land use patterns, soil analysis for seasonal nutrient depletion, crop use of chemical fertilizers, adopting improved input application methods showcases a different dimension of the impact of echoupals on farmers’ lives and their occupation. It may be interesting to note that a majority of farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh became adept (learnt and gained significant levels of proficiencies) in handling support infrastructure of radio satellite technology, solar electricity management, post-harvest operations and storage, grading and transportation of quality commodities from farm gate to markets. (Upton and Fuller, 2003) Patanjali from 2015 onwards: ‘Yog Shivirs’ organised by Baba Ramdeva, across the country, annually are a highly patronised and attended events, with an unbridled fan- following. One such shivir became a regular feature in the southwest Karnataka during 2010-2012, across the western coastline, at Mangalore, and Udupi, Karnataka. These shivirs were not just attended by the people of these two towns, they are attended by a majority of residents of several villages around these two towns in this region. The shivirs used to provide avenues for lot of marketing activity as well. At these Shivirs, there are stalls operated by different companies including Patanjali, which both display, demonstrate, exhibit and sell their brands. It was an insight for a marketer to observe ‘the reaction of a local woman checking an ayurvedic product in a stall, and knowing that it is made by a women’s SHG, to revert with an excitement that “Wow! This is made by our own neighbour women! This scene, repeated across the stalls, reveals that companies which are enabling them to appreciate their own base and marketer value add act as the re-connectors. Further, the emergence of the market has the testimony that brands are being consumed at the remotest places as preferred choices. Probing the production supply chains on one side and the distribution networks on the
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other side, Patanjali Ayurved Limited, hints at making a concerted effort in building large centres of raw material production through farmers’ networks and women’s networks in providing the base for producing a range of consumer goods with its unique quality checks, and supply chain standards. The company subtly develops its collaborations with village level micro enterprises and communities in building the raw material procurement systems and also in manufacture of the products at several centralised as well as decentralised locations. The announcement of Baba Ramdev on 12 Dec, 2017 evening, when he addressed a gathering of top marketers and media veterans (after he was named the IMPACT Person of the Year 2017), he not only predicted Patanjali’s turnover to increase to Rs.1 lakh crores in the coming three to five years but also claimed to have created over 20,000 jobs in less than two months (www. exchange4media.com, 12.12.2017). Patanjali Initiatives: Patanjali Ayurved Limited (PAL), worked to build unitary marketing strategies by way of sourcing raw materials directly from farmers, and manufacturing plants were set-up close to the sources to eliminate the transportation cost (Sourabh Bhattacharya et al, 2016). PAL also built large processing capacity through backward integration by cultivating endangered herbs on its own farmlands in Patanjali Food and Herbal Park. This strategy worked in variety of ways for the company: it helped in reducing the costs, in creating strong word of mouth and strong delivery channel to penetrate rural markets. In the words of the Acharya Balakrishna, CEO of PAL, “Our input costs are low because we source directly from farmers, avoiding middlemen. Most companies have administrative costs of around 10% of their revenue, but in our case it is just 2%”. Strong distribution network: Acharya Balakrishna, emphasizes, “If you talk of Patanjali, people are coming forward to be its franchisees – not just in large cities and urban confluences, but also in many small
rural and peri-urban towns, because besides getting a hassle-free employment, they are also feeling satisfied internally by curing people’s diseases and taking India’s rich and old practices to the masses”. (ibid, 2016) These two exemplify the nurturing of a unitary marketing strategy, which fulfils the consumer needs of the producers and lifts them to be at a much more critical role than just being raw material producers or basic value adders, but as core value providers, core brand endorsers and consumers of core and supportive brand products. Baba Ramdev, the force behind ‘Patanjali’ the most disruptive brand in FMCG stated in one of the interviews, “One who knows how to convert knowledge, emotions and actions to wealth is termed as a success”. The emergence of Patanjali as one of the most formidable FMCG brands in India in a short span of time can be attributed to its unique and unitary approach of connecting with its suppliers and consumers just the way they like it. Marketing Implications: It is relevant for marketers, consumer behaviour researchers and theorists and students to understand that there exist multiple layers in an emerging economy and a marketer needs to permeate through them to be successful both in terms of profitability and socially. This paper offers a fresh insight to marketers to develop bi-directional unitary marketing strategies for operating in emerging economies. Unique and Unitary Marketing Strategies – at the cusp of a bottoms-up revolution: The phenomenon of millions of rural producers being serviced as suppliers, for the entire business spectrum of Indian markets is not new. However, the very essence of rurality that describes six lakh Indian villages as the most un-reachable and therefore not connected to the urban marketers for servicing is being busted by the pursuit of unitary strategies of these pioneering companies, which focused on connecting back to their core suppliers as the end consumers of the very brands that they are building and taking to every market
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possible. In essence, the unitary marketing strategies when depicted in Figure 3, offer a 360-degree circles of value chains, that otherwise are uni-directional. Converting a binary marketing approach of upending the rural suppliers with urban consumers by using a bi-directional unitary marketing strategy is bringing a cascade of benefits to the rural producers who is also the largest segment of rural consumers, as reflected in Figure 3. Unidirectional binary marketing strategies: The users of binary marketing strategies has uni-directional approach. The follower of this approach considered the ‘Rural producers/ artisans’ as the supplier of raw-material or work-in-progress component and ‘Processors’ are the urban factories/aggregators/ distributors who conduct binary transactions i.e. procuring supply from one group and servicing the demand of another group (Figure 1). This other group is represented in the form of metro and mid-tier consumers; and mid- town wholesalers/ retailers who service the remote rural consumers.
Figure 1: Supply driven binary marketing strategies
The other representation of binary marketing strategy is provided in Figure 2 where the processors/marketers make use of self-help groups as a medium to penetrate in the rural markets.
Figure 2: Demand driven binary marketing strategies
Bi-directional unitary marketing strategies: The review of Amul, ITC and Patanjali cases has helped us to articulate a model which is unique and unitary in nature and helps in integration of the layers due to its bi- directional approach. The above three cases highlight different context in which each of the company has developed unitary strategies to conduct their business and operations. In case of Amul, being a producer enterprise, it had a mandate to provide required market linkages, basic and supplementary services to its farmers. And the case adequately reflects the success of Amul in enhancing the capability of its farmers to produce milk. However, for ITC, the mandate was not to serve SHGs rather to have a super effective supply chain and ensure their profitability. ITC was required to ensure profitability at enterprise and marketer level and for this it was required to enhance the profitability at the base level. And these base level suppliers were large in number and scattered. Thus, uniting them becomes a basic goal in ITC’s Mangaldeep and e-choupal case scenario. The success of Patanjali take the unique and unitary marketing strategies to the next level, where it was not just functional and operational integration but the emotional connect which the consumers and rural producers have with the brand by being the part of production journey.
Figure 3: Framework of unitary marketing strategies
The unitary marketing strategies framework
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(Figure 3) represents that each member of the chain interacts in both the direction and there exists a unitary link which links a producer to a processor to its consumers. This can also be understood as the consumers acting as small producer groups and providing supplies to producers who in turn process these supplies and pass it to value-adders to refine it further (eg. Packaging, distribution etc.) And they (consumers) buy back these processed goods as in the above cases. Conclusion and Future Directions: The three cases discuss the significance of using unitary marketing strategies in a variety of ways. In the pre-reform era Amul, developed a bi-directional approach with the help of reverse logistics system to supply ‘Balamul’ and ‘Amul Dana’ to the farmers on one side and getting quality milk products from them for the urban consumers. During 1990-2000s, the unitary strategy was to provide a network of human healthcare services and rural retailing network for Amul products in the rural parts of the country. ITC’s unitary marketing approach was anchored in sourcing the supplies from SHGs and small-scale entrepreneurs and encouraging BISWA to take up reverse flow of final products back to villages and promote its products at SHGs as village level retail units. Its e-choupal initiative also exemplify the bi- directional strategy under which the farmers were both the suppliers of agricultural produce to its international processing and marketing centers and recipients of fair pricing, payment systems, warehousing and technology. The bi-directional unitary marketing strategies adopted by Patanjali signifies the relevance of backward integration in reducing the input cost significantly for the company on one hand and at the same time creating hassle free employment for the rural population and a network of brand ambassadors promoting and distributing its products to masses. As reflected in these cases, role of self-help groups, farmers and small-scale entrepreneurs is not limited as a producer. These producers
add value to the products and services supplied to urban markets and act as consumers also both for inputs, technology and finished products and services. Thus, an integrated ecosystem is proposed in this research paper (Figure 3). There is further scope for research to gauge the role of government and public organizations in creating unitary marketing systems to integrate several layers of an emerging economy like India. The future researchers could study the challenges and opportunities which each member (producer, value-adder, and consumer) would come across while going ahead. References: • Baxter, P., & Jack, S. (2008). Qualitative Case
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for prosperity in BoP Markets, Wharton School Publishing, Pearson Publishers
• Magdum, A. S. (2015). A Study on Revisiting Of Marketing Strategies for Self Help Group in the Resilient Of Business Environment. Clear International Journal of Research in Commerce & Management, 6(12), 89-91.
• Heredia, Ruth. (1997). The Amul India Story, Tata-McGraw-Hill Education, New Delhi.
• Michael E Porter, Mark R Kramer, 2011, Creating Shared Value, Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2011, HBSP, Harvard University, Boston.
• Nicholas J.C. Santos, Gene R. Laczniak (2009) Marketing to the Poor: An Integrative Justice Model for Engaging Impoverished Market Segments. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing: Spring 2009, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 3-15.
• Noor, Mohd. K.B. (2008). Case Study: A Strategic Research Methodology, American Journal of Applied Sciences, Volume 5, Issue 11, pp. 1602-1604.
• Prahlad, C.K. (2004). The Fortune at the Bottom of Pyramid: Eradicating poverty through Profits, Wharton School Publishing House.
• Ray Goldberg, Ian M Cornell, 2013, Amul Dairy, Harvard Business School, HBSP, Harvard University, Boston, USA.
• Rohit Deshpande, Tarun Khanna, Namrata Arora, Tanya Bijlani, 2016 and 2017, India’s Amul, keeping up with times, Harvard Business School, HBSP, Harvard University, Boston, USA.
• Sarmah, Bijoylaxmi and Rahman, Zillur (2016). Mangaldeep: Spreading Fragrance in India, South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases, 5(1), Sage Publications, pp.109-112.
• Sheth, Jagdish N. (2011) Impact of Emerging Markets on Marketing: Rethinking Existing Perspectives and Practices. Journal of Marketing: July 2011, Vol.75, No. 4, pp.166- 182.
• Sourabh Bhattacharya, Arpita Agnihotri, 2016, Patanjali Ayurved Limited: Disruption or Innovation? HBSP, Harvard University Press, Boston, USA.
• Srinvas R Sundar, 1998, Amul and India’s National Dairy Development Board, Harvard Business School, HBSP, Harvard University Press, Boston, USA.
• Yin, R. K. (2003). Case study research: Design and methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Misra, Bibhu (2018). What is next for Self Help Group movement in India? The Times of India. Retrieved from https:// timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/ voices/what-is-next-for-self-help-group- movement-in-india/
• Unknown Author (2017). The turnover of Patanjali will increase to Rs 1 lakh crores in the coming three to five years. Exchange 4 Media. Retrieved from
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• Unknown Author (2011). ITC lights up rural women thru Mangaldeep. The New Indian Express. Retrieved from http://www. itcportal.com/media-centre/press-reports- content.aspx?id=1067&type=C
• https://amul.com/m/a-note-on-the- achievements-of-the-dairy-cooperatives as visited on 23 August 2019
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