"India White failed to provide rural consumers with sustainable reasons on why they needed to use the products." Alok Shankar CEO, MD, Blackstone Market Facts India

Marketing is a process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and exchanging products of value with others. It is a process that starts by addressing human needs and wants.

I believe India White made the classic mistake of plunging into the rural market and committing large resources without assessing the market or understanding the need for its offerings in any way before initiating Operation Hinterland. The rural market always appears attractive to marketers by virtue of its sheer size. Unfortunately, all that this does is to trap companies into making huge investments without adequate need-assessment. This is the trap that India White seems to have fallen into.

Sadly, most marketers concentrate on the art of attracting new customers rather than retaining them. It is imperative to understand that an increase in long-term sales volumes is a function of the rate of trial followed by the rate of repeat purchase (together, these constitute the conversion rate of consumers). India White's free sampling of the products seemed to have worked brilliantly as far as the initial round of trials were concerned due to its novelty factor-the markets where Operation Hinterland were launched weren't familiar with the products on offer, and predictably, consumers in these markets were only too willing to try them-especially since they were being handed out free. However, without any ''sustained repeat purchase'' over a period of time, India White found its sales stagnating, and then declining.

Simply put, the marketing strategy of free rural sampling adopted by India White's marketing director, Ashok Khanna, was able to create new consumers but fell short when it came to retaining them. The reason? The company failed to provide rural consumers with sustainable reasons on why they needed to use the products, and more importantly, pay for them after the sampling exercise was over.

Instead of scattering their marketing efforts, companies have to focus on the buyers whom they have the greatest chance of satisfying. India White's next mistake was in adopting a shotgun approach of mass marketing. Instead of identifying the core market segment in terms of who they were and where they were, and following that up with a focused approach to reach and influence them, India White's operation was driven by an unfocused distribution push. In effect, Operation Hinterland reached a huge audience that was relevant to its marketing objectives, but failed to capitalise on that.

The marketer must see his task as that of converting an undifferentiated product into a differentiated offering. True, India White must have clearly demonstrated the benefits of each of its products to the relevant audience through the free sampling exercise. But I do not think India White's marketing people were able to reinforce the brand promise through emotional benefits and saliency-both critical to induce repeat purchases. Thus, although the company did some pioneering work in inducing trial among a huge number of none-users, the trial resulted in nothing, and consumers lapsed into their old ways when they failed to see a ''unique, relevant'' product offer.

In an emergent market like India, it is critical for marketers to understand the differences between rural and urban markets. On the one hand, the rural market poses the seemingly insurmountable channel challenge of how companies can reach their customers. That said, it presents a huge opportunity in terms of volumes. The urban market, in contrast, is easy to reach and there aren't too many channel issues involved. However, urban customers are capricious and the markets continually redefine categories.

A smart marketer will never try and offset losses in one market with gains in the other. The marketing objective of all companies, and indeed, of India White, should be to retain and build volumes in existing urban markets and look for opportunities in new emerging rural markets.

"Free sampling can convince the consumer to switch habits. But it can also reinforce her instinctive behavioural response not to change." Sanjiv Kumar CMD, Candico India

The sheer time and effort needed to create new customers by, in effect, changing consumer behaviour, is amply bought out in multiple historical examples. The radio, the telephone, the TV, and now, the internet have all taken years to achieve the critical mass required to be financially self-sustaining (the last still hasn't).

If a company desires to change consumer behaviour, it needs one of these two: a couple of decades, or an industry-wide association willing to back a certain product (or service) standard while consumer-resistance is slowly chipped away and the real tangible benefits of the new product become apparent.

The fact that India White attempted to introduce a shift to products that have some familiarity to the rural consumer rather then trying to vend brand new products must have mitigated the enormity of the task. That it still remained a daunting one is evident in the dilemma facing Dani.

I believe that marketing may be a powerful enough tool to create new consumers (as opposed to the relatively easier task of shifting consumers between brands) given a couple of conditions:

• The new product needs to have a clear, demonstrable and immediate benefit over the current alternative.

• The marketing message should stay focused on this benefit and the company should not crowd its communiqué with other messages.

India White may have flooded the market with its samples, but I wonder if it looked at the 'benefits' that its products provided its potential consumers. It is easier to browbeat a consumer into believing that India White's toothpaste has the 'benefit' of making her teeth whiter then it is to study whether this benefit holds any value to the consumer. The company needs to honestly question itself whether the benefits it professed were identified after studying the specific needs of the rural consumer or were merely assumed to work for rural consumers because they did so for their urban counterparts.

Free sampling is a double-edged sword. It can convince the consumer to switch habits and it can just as easily reinforce her instinctive behavioural response not to change. Clear, demonstrable, and immediate benefit is even more important in a free sampling scenario because if the consumer does not perceive the promised benefits of the product during the trial, you've just ensured that she will not try out the product again. The 'inquisitive sale' market would have been completely eliminated.

Another real danger of the free sampling initiative, especially in the way that India White seems to have gone about it, is marketing overkill. When you have an army of corporate suits descending on rural habitats there is every chance that in the excitement to push the product, promises that the product simply cannot keep will be made. There is such a thing as overselling your product, especially if the corporate attitude is ''make them try it first, we'll worry about them buying it later''. India White's Operation Hinterland may well have instigated well-meaning but inexperienced individuals to say whatever they needed to in order to instigate a trial.

The rural-urban substitution effect that Dani refers to-of growth in demand in rural areas making up for a fall in the same in urban ones-overlooks the massive differences between value-obsessed rural consumers and their relatively image-focused urban cousins. Despite the India White example, though, companies can expect to increase sales in rural markets since the low per-capita consumption in the rural markets coupled with a decade of strong agricultural growth and exposure to the mass media has primed them for strong medium term growth. The secret is to come up with a value-benefit that is really relevant to the rural consumer. Did India White do this?