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nking and insurance. However television widely adapted the components and features and brand name when compared to other two products viz., pharmaceuticals and hair care. Pharma companies have adapted only packaging and labeling. In cluster 2 and cluster 3 only pharmaceutical and banking and insurance product categories are represented. Between these two; banking and insurance had higher mean values for all product elements. As found earlier, pharma companies have adapted only packaging and labeling.

DISCUSSION & LIMITATIONS

Very few studies are conducted to understand how rural markets are understood by the marketers such as the one proposed here. This study provides evidence that the different organizations and executives represent rural markets different. However, there is a substantial overlap of these representations. Three cluster solution that resulted from the data analysis is an indication of the extent of overlap of the representations. To a great extent this is contrary to the actual perception that exists which has been discussed in literature (Jha, 1988, Kashyap and Raut, 2006, Velayudhan, 2007). One reason for such deviation is that while operationalising marketing initiatives in rural markets, executive considers several other criteria like company resources, cost, physical infrastructure and so on. Given that these criteria would differ from organization to organization, there is possibility of varied rural market definitions. To imply, definition of rural market of an organization is not just influenced by the representation of executive but probably also several conditions. Thus, this study has contributed a probable alternative, albeit not a complete solution, for understanding rural markets and operationalising it. Future studies may further probe into this area.

Results of the study widely follow the contingency theory proposed by Jain (1989), thus extending the support to empirically test the contingency framework of product adaptation from International Marketing to Intranational Marketing domain, especially in rural marketing. Among the four elements of the products, size / amount has greater degree of adaptation followed by brand name, packaging and labelling and components and features. This finding is very moderately different to what literature in International marketing suggests like, constituents are third most frequent and features fourth most frequent (Leonidou, 1996), features and constituents are first most frequently adapted (Ward, 1973, Sorenson and Weichman, 1975, Hill and Still, 1984, Balbaki and Malhotra, 1993). Brand name is fifth most frequently adapted (Leonidou, 1996). Packaging is the second most frequently adapted (Sorenson and Weichman, 1975, Hill and Still, 1984, Leonidou, 1996). Labeling is most frequently adapted (Leonidou, 1996).

The study provides evidence that the degree of product adaptation differs with the way rural is operationalised by the organisations. This kind of contextualisation is the unique contribution of this study and is different from the studies in the international marketing domain. However, the mode of explaining the construct ‘product adaptation’ very much falls in the contingency paradigm (Jain, 1989, Theodosiou and Leonidou, 2003); where organisations tend to arrive at a product market fit depending upon their understanding of the markets. The results indicate that researchers need to consider the ma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。