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01, Dohbol, 2002, Kashyap, 2003, Bijapurkar, 2003).

Similar to the debate on standardization versus adaptation in International marketing literature (Buzzell, 1968, Jain 1989, Terpstra and Sarathy 2001), rural marketing scholars are also divided. While Baig (1980) advocated standardization of product for rural and urban markets, a host of several academicians and practitioners advocated adaptation of product (Das and Sen, 1991, Rao, 2000, Jha, 2003, Velayudhan, 2007). However, decision to either adapt or standardise a product is not absolutely dichotomous; and adequate degree of adaptation is contingent upon a variety of internal and external factors (Douglas and Wind, 1987, Jain, 1989, Zou and Cavusgil 1996, Cateora and Graham, 1999, Theodosiou and Leonidou 2003). Survey of popular and academic literature in rural marketing domain suggests that products when marketed in rural areas are modified according to the local conditions and consumer preferences (Das and Sen, 1991, Aneja, 1993, Thomas, 1999, Rao, 2000, Patel, 2001, Financial Express, 2000, Ganguly, 2001, Rajan, 2001, Sarvade, 2002, Jha 2003).

For example, Rao (2000) and Jha (2003) found that rural consumers prefer purchasing small packs; as their economic conditions do not permit to purchase in bulk. Velayudhan (2007) indicates the role of product adaptation in tackling competition and market differences. Thorat (2007) recommended banks to design products based on rural culture, customs, language, literacy and other social indicators. Erda (2008) found that the rural and urban consumers differ on quality consciousness, function consciousness and brand consciousness and hence products should be appropriately modified to suit the rural consumers. Bishnoi and Bharati (2008) urge that marketers must first understand consumers’ requirement related to the utilitarian aspect of products and then design the product accordingly. Narula et al (2009) urged marketers to design simple insurance schemes and customise products to the crops and inputs of farmers.

PRODUCT ADAPTATION VIA EXECUTIVES PERCEIVED RURALITY

Product adaptation or standardization is theoretically grounded in the concept of inter-market segmentation. Intermarket segments are defined as the presence of well-defined and similar clusters of customers across geographical boundaries and are identified on similar criteria (Simmonds, 1985, Kale and Sudharshan, 1987, Jain, 1989, Samiee and Roth, 1992, Szymanski et al., 1993, Shoham, 1995). Organisations launch standardized products, if they are able to locate intermarket segments, lest would most likely resort to product adaptation.

In the context of international marketing, whatever might be the market segment variable; organisations cross a well-defined geographical boundary and thus making it easy to identify the adaptation of products. On the other hand, rural marketing includes all the dimensions of the transactions that form part of rural – rural; rural – urban and urban – rural (Jha, 1988, Gopalaswamy, 2005, Jha, 2003), but the definition is constrained by its choice of variables and ignoring physical space influences (Halfacree, 1993, 1995). Broadly, rural has no well defined and agreed upon geographical boundaries and is defined and operationalised differently by different organizations (Kashyap and Raut, 2006). This creates a serious challenge to aggregate product adaptations with本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。