Changing Face Of Rural Consumer In Emerging Markets Economics Essay

Changing Face Of Rural Consumer In Emerging Markets Economics Essay India is growing at an average annual rate of 7.6 for the past many years and it is expected to continue growing at an equal if not faster rate. The rapid economic growth is increasing and enhancing employment and business opportunities and in turn increasing disposable incomes. The rural consumers in India account for about 73 percent of the total consumers. In recent years, the lifestyle of a large number of rural consumers in India has changed dramatically and the process of change is going on. The buying behaviour of the rural consumers is influenced by several factors such as socio-economic conditions, cultural environment, literacy level, occupation, geographical location, efforts on the part of sellers, exposure to media etc. As the benefits of growth trickle down, an increasing number of people are moving up from the economically weaker class to join the middle class. The middle class with its rising numbers and incomes is thus becoming the biggest market segment. The afflue nt class too will continue to grow in terms of size and value, albeit, at a slower pace than the middle class. Most of the companies are going rural because of large and diverse markets, increase in literacy level and changing life style of the people. Even globalization and liberalization expanded the Indian rural market. Several studies have shown that rural consumers are generally ignorant and they are also unorganised. Under these circumstances, the sellers or the manufacturers, exploit the consumers. Though, the consumers in India have been provided with various safety measures against their exploitation. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study the changing face of rural consumer in emerging markets. Key Words: Globalisation, Rural Consumer, Rural Market, Rural Potential. Introduction Rural consumers in emerging markets of developing countries are among the largest and fastest growing segments of the world’s population. In a country like India, where a substanti al number of the rural people are living below poverty line, having high level of unemployment and poor literacy level; consumer awareness continues to remain low. Above all about 70 percent of India’s population lives in rural areas. There are about 6, 38,365 villages in the country as against about 300 cities and 5,161 towns. Of the 121 crore Indians, 83.3 crore live in rural areas while 37.7 crore stay in urban areas, as per the Census 2011. Even in urban areas, a large number of people live in slums whose life is not better than those living in rural areas. This clearly highlights that India is still dominated by rural population. There were 7,935 towns in 2011 as against 5,161 in 2001. About 13.3% of India’s population and 42.6% of urban population reside in 53 cities having more than a million people, while the remaining 7,882 cities account for 47.4% of the urban population. There has been a steady increase in the number of cities from 5 in 1951 to 35 in 2001 to 53 in 2011 having a population of more than 10 lacs. About 31% of the urban population lives in the top-20 cities and about 51% of the country’s urban population lives in the top-100 cities.4 A report on survey conducted by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) says that there are 720 million consumers across the villages in rural India. Hence, the development of the nation largely depends upon the development of the rural population. Agriculture is the main occupation of the rural people for their subsistence. It has been observed in the report that the condition of the rural consumers is deplorable because they are being exploited in the rural markets on account of lack of competition among the sellers. Although the rural consumers face various problems like fake brands and spurious products, misleading advertisements, unfair warranties and guarantees, and unreasonable pricing but it hardly affects their passion to buying because they want to buy those prod ucts which reflect their prosperity level. Similarly, with globalization and liberalization, rural market in India expanded its potentialities across the world. Globalization describes a process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through a global network of communication, transportation, and trade. Globalization can be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant locations in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice – versa. Globalization generally means integrating our economy with the economy of world. Globalization had its impact on various sectors including agricultural, industrial, financial, health and many others. Globalization has helped in:

Testing in HR Recruiting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Testing in HR Recruiting - Essay Example In addition, the poorly carried out interview is detrimental to an organization future. It is in this regards that tests are mandatory during interviews to sieve out unwanted traits in organizations. Inappropriate hiring can be costly errors to rectify and as such, manager should concentrate on convincing hiring processes, which offer, return on investment. In a busy organization stress, tolerance tests are extremely imperative. This prevents the hiring of employees who cannot withstand pressure from both customers and managers. Subsequently, a satisfactory interview process through tests also enables identification of personal style of employees whereby only people with proficient personality traits get the chance (Dessler, 2011). This makes the interviewing process a critical area in human resource management where channeling of all resources is necessary. The future of any business organization depends on the nature of employees. Ambitious, dedicated and focused employees guarantee the success of an organization while lazy and less enthusiastic employees assure a fall in the operations of an organization. Psychometric tests during interview offer an evidence-based insight into behaviors of employees (Palmer & Varner, 2005). Nevertheless, straight, forwards, pertinent information gets concealed to the interviewing managers that are vital in the hiring process. In any event, that a psychometric test is not carried out before hiring managers will have problems coming up with non committed; at times arrogant employees who do not only make the business fail but also demoralize other employees. It is in this regards that clients with impressive results get retained in the hiring process (Hyder & LÃ ¶vblad, 2007). This improves greater self-awareness among management teams and employees. Â  

Executive Compensation - How much is too Much Research Paper

Executive Compensation - How much is too Much - Research Paper Example The debate about high executive compensation has been in the spotlight in United States since industrial revolution. However, it was during the great depression that this news and discussion made the headlines. Since then, this debate has always received widespread during all economic recessions. Following the pattern, as the financial crunch and economic recession hit the United States in 2006-07, this debate again reached its peak because the masses started questioning the perceived wide gap between the salaries of an average employee and the executives. Critics of high compensation believe that this is one of prime reasons of increasing inefficiencies, recession, and increasing income inequality in United States. On the other hand, proponents of high compensation believe that these pay levels are a result of market and competitive forces and external forces such as the government, watchdogs and others should have no right to interfere in how much the boards of willing to pay their executives. The thesis statement around which this paper that revolve is that â€Å"executives pay is sky rocketing and there is no rational and logical thought to allow these pay levels to increase further if we want a way out of this recession and prevent future recessions† (Mishra, McConaughy & Gobeli, 2000). ... They compare the pay of CEOs with investment bankers, hedge fund managers, equity investors, lawyers, and others. Since 1990s, there has been steady increase in the salaries of above-mentioned professionals but the pays of CEOs and other executives has not risen with the same percentage. Furthermore, out of the top 0.1 percent people in the United States arranged according to the gross income, only 3 percent of them were CEOs and executives of companies. Furthermore, in the year 2007, â€Å"top 20 hedge fund manager bagged more than three times the pay earned by the salaries of all S&P 500 combined† (Hayes & Schaefer, 2009). Proponents of this school of thought strongly believe that companies will have to take bold steps in order to retain their executives because many smart CEOs have already started shifting to Wall Street to take positions at private equity firms (Hayes & Schaefer, 2009). In order to defend the position of CEOs being overpaid, other experts have gone on to a ccept that executives and specifically, CEOs are overpaid but it is not because of the work that they do but because their job is to inspire people. The reason behind providing CEOs with the fattest checks is to ensure that it keeps other people in the company motivated (Kay & Putten, 2007). Everyone dreams to become a CEO or an executive some day and people dream about the same because they know the compensation levels. People look at executives, their cars, houses, clubs, salaries, benefits, lifestyles and that is what keeps them motivated to stay with a company and put in their best effort into their jobs hoping that within a decade or so, they would also be able to reach that dream position. Economists call this, as