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(Penetrating Rural Markets)
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The PERFORM survey conducted
in 1995, shows that there are 697,000 retail outlets in
U.P. of which only 110,000 stock contraceptives. Many
of these are in remote rural areas. Thus there is an immense
potential to reach out to the rural population through
commercial marketing, by promotion of specific brands
and creating a distribution network for them in villages
and small towns. To this end, SIFPSA supported a rural
marketing project implemented by M/s Hindustan Latex Ltd.
(HLL) with the objective of making condoms and oral contraceptive
pills widely available in towns of up to 20,000 population
in 28 districts of U.P. The project continued from 1997
to 2000. |
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An independent evaluation of this project
confirmed that the project had achieved a greater penetration
of commercial branded condoms in rural areas and extensive
promotional inputs had resulted in higher sales of contraceptives.
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Increasing Reach
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Based on the encouraging results of
the first project and the need to expand marketing of
contraceptives, M/s HLL was again selected for marketing
condoms and oral contraceptive pills throughout U.P.
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This three year project, being implemented
from April 2000, has set objectives of expanding the sale
of specific commercial and subsidized brands of condoms
and oral pills in rural areas of U.P. to provide 13.67
lac couple years of protection. |
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Reaching the Mind and ‘Haats’
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To increase demand and create brand
awareness, the project has an extensive promotional strategy
that includes various media like stalls in melas (fairs)
& haats (weekly markets), video- van operations , radio
& press ads., wall & shop paintings and hoardings. To
facilitate ease in purchase as well as to boost top of
the mind recall, product messages are prominently displayed
at retail outlets through posters, danglers, stickers
etc. Innovative means, like printing promotional messages
for oral pills on bindi packets are being used to increase
recall amongst rural women. |
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Ensuring Village Penetration |
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With the aim of at least one retail
outlet stocking both pills and condoms in 9000 additional
villages at the end of three years, the project will concentrate
on villages with a population of less than 5000 which
have no outlet selling contraceptives at present. The
focus will also be on non-traditional outlets like grocers
as most of these villages have no medicine shops. M/s
HLL will cater to these villages through the established
marketing channels comprising of C & F agents, stockists,
retailers and van sales. Additionally they are also linking
up with IFPS project activities: integrating with outreach
efforts of over 100 NGOs and milk cooperatives, promoting
and supplying to rural medical practitioners and other
potential linkages through district action plans (DAPs).
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Monitoring Quality & Quantity |
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To ensure the quality of contraceptives
being supplied, a strict quality assurance mechanism has
been adopted for all products to be used under the project.
Each consignment of products is tested at reputed quality
assurance laboratories before being despatched to the
market. |
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Monitoring of the project is being done
by a six-monthly retail audit to track sales and independent
village surveys to confirm brand penetration at village
level. These will form the basis for payment by SIFPSA
to HLL under an elaborate performance based disbursement
system linking disbursement of funds to achievement of
rural sales and brand penetration objectives.
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