Impact of IT in Rural Marketing.

Impact of IT on Rural Marketing:

Information Technology has an overwhelming influence on all the spheres of life; here we will try to look at the influence of IT on rural marketing in general and distribution in particular. Two examples have been discussed; one would be the use of GIS (Geographic Information System) and second would be emergence of rural kiosks.
First the application of GIS. The software is facilitating distribution in villages. Satellite images have been used to identify clusters of villages, their distance from the town and roads. Using this data decisions on where to set up distribution points, setting up distribution routes and which clusters to cover can be decided much easily.
In the last five years many companies like ITC, Parry’s, HLL have come up with rural kiosks, which is basically a net-enabled PC installed in a village. Though the main objective of setting up the kiosk is not distribution, like ITC's e-choupal is there as a procurement point and HLL i-shakti is an extension of its shakti scheme in rural areas. But once the infrastructure is in place, it will be and is being leveraged by these companies to sell their products and non-competing products from other companies.