Read an interesting report in the ET today, based on some survey conducted by Credit Suisse. They survey found that the rural consumers are more quality consicous and less price sensitive. Hardly any of the polled users had switched operators basis call-rates.
This is very interesting coz most of us (self included) had believed that this is a market where ARPUs would be low and constant reacquiring would mean that the telco’s hardly make any money.
Also the report says that the rural consumers would constitute almost 40% of the total users by 2012.These two findings have some serious ramifications:
– Infrastructure needs to be first priority when moving into a new market. Typically we had seen that most telco’s went to these markets with a promise of “cheaper” service
– The first mover will have advantage over others, everything else being same. This is evident from the lower switch rate seen in rural consumers.
– The marketing spends promos highlighting reduced rates etc will now have to be substituted with better distribution/session-experience.
But the most interesting this is that the rural consumers remain price sensitive inspite of having a clear priority for better service. This would make them a tough market for telco’s- providing high quality services at competitive price where ARPUs are anyways lower 🙂