CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR OF

JHABUA
INTRODUCTION :- Jhabua is a predominantly tribal district located in the western
part of Madhya Pradesh. It is surrounded by Panchamahal and Baroda districts of Gujrat,
Banswara district of Rajsthan and Alirajpur, Dhar and Ratlam districts of Madhya Pradesh. .
This adivasi dominated district situated in hilly area is full of natural resources The terrain is
hilly, undulating typically known as "Jhabua hills topography". The district has an
agriculture based economy. The main crops of the area are
Maize,Jowar,Bajra,Cotton,Wheat,Urad,Arhar, Groundnut and Gram.
Limestone,Dolomite,Calside etc. minerals are found here.Meghnagar is a developing
industrial area of the district.

Jhabua is sparsely populated area with the total population of  7.84 lakhs according to 2001
census.
The total area is 3782 Sq Kms. There are about 656 inhabited villages. About 85% of
population is tribal while 3% population belongs to Schedule Castes. 47 per cent of the
people live below the poverty line. The literacy rate according to 2001 census is 36.87% with
female literacy of only 4%. Thus, Jhabua is an overwhelmingly tribal and poor district. The
district’s per capita income is a mere Rs 8,541 per year.

JHABUA DISTRICT AT A GLANCE

(**   As per Population (2001Census) / Gram Sampak Abhiyan)

Area of the District 3782 Sq.Km.

Forest Area 645 Sq.Km.
Tehsil 5
Development Blocks 6
Gram Panchayats
Revenue Villages 813
Inhabited Villages 656
Cluster
VEC
Primary Schools
Jr. Primary schools
Ashram Shala
Aanganwadi
Aanganwadi Sub Centres
SC 3%
Tribal 85.60%
Male Populaton 396141
Female Populaton 388145
 Total Populaton 784286
Rural 91%
Tribal 85.60%

When I started to write about Consumer Behavior of Jhabhua so I was thinking that from where
should I start my topic. So then I decided to go by the Rama Bijapurkark’s book, “WE ARE
JUST LIKE THAT” . in that book he has beautifully described the Consumer Behavior of India.
So I thought that was a best way to follow or next option which I had was that we can follow the
Thomas Friedman’s book. The world is said to be flat in that book, he has described
globalization according to time partition but at the end I have decided that I would try to follow
the pattern of both the books so it will become easy to understand that how is the behavior of
consumer in Jhabhua.

REASON FOR CHOOSING JHABHUA

“ Fortune of the bottom of the pyramid pyramid” is the book written by C.K Prahald, in that
book he has described very beautifully about e potential and behavior of poor people. If I was
asked to fit an example for that book so no doubt I would have selected Jhabhua and second
reason is that every one of us is somehow related with rural areas so it will be easy for us to
understand the consumer behavior of rural area. And as the future marketers we should
understand that low income consumers as well as rural market because has already covered for
than 50% of India. One more reason is that It is surrounded by Gujrat and Rajasthan so we can
find the mixture of three states Gujrat,Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Thus, we can find the
impact of these states on Consumer Behavior.

MADE FOR JHABUA

Jhabhua is spatially populated area with the total population of 7.84 lakhs according to 2001
census. 85% of people are tribal while 3% population belongs to schedule cast.

4% of the people live below the poverty line. The literacy rate 36.87% according to 2001 census
and the female literacy is below 4%. The per capita income is Rs 8541/year.
After watching this data everyone will come to the conclusion that Jhabhua is an extremely tribal
and poor district. Thus, we can say that there are very low chances to sell any product very
successfully. But I think that this would not be the right story for Jhabhua.

I have been living in Jhbhua since 16 years and what I have observed that there is a very
huge amount of unorganized income i.e. most of the people there are getting there monthly
income in an unorganized way and it is not easy for any one to assume that what is the per capita
income of the people of Jhabhua. 85% of the population is tribal and 36.87 is literate and I have
taken this data very positively for Jhabhua. The advantage of this data is that there is huge
amount of reservation for tribal in Jhabhua. So that for every job in Jhabhua there is more than
80% reservation for them. Secondly they have a very good fertile land for agriculture. The
stretch of the land is not so sufficient but the quality of the land is very good. This is the reason
many of them have a very good job and excellent agriculture also. This is the story of most of the
Adivasi people living in Jhabhua. After looking at the female literacy which is below 4% in
Jhabhua, one can think that there is very little scope for female to rise but I think that there is
scope for them to rise. Every adivasi family thus purchases some amount of silver according to
their affordability Thus; it is a kind of saving which they do. When there were no banks in
Jhabhua, according to culture of adivasi there savings were in terms of silver. And till now they
follow this tradition very much. So, the idea is that there are so many chances for the financial
sectors to set up banks in Jhabhua but no private banks except for government banks like SBI,
and Bank of Baroda Is concentrating there.

Moving towards the healthcare system in Jhabhua we can say that it is very poor. For
any medication they are dependent on small clinic and there are no good hospitals available. For
any major treatment of the patient and casualty the people have to travel to other cities and
outside areas. We cannot say that the investment in medical department is scarce because in one
of the village rambapur of Jhabhua there is a doctor Basant Singh Khatedia whose per day
income is approximately 30000 to 35000 and 90% of his income comes from these adivasi
people. Most of the people in Jhabhua die due to malaria and malnutrition. So they are high
chances for healthcare to improve and new hospitals to be set up in Jhabhua. In Jhabhua almost
every household member uses mobile but the dominant player is BSNL only. There are very less
services available of other telecom industry. Thus, there are so many areas where different
brands can take initiative to set up their tower in Jhabhua.
PROFILE OF CITY

GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF JHABHUA

Jhabhua is not a very developed city one will not find many big buildings and
good infrastructure even in the main city of Jhabhua. If you are new to the city it becomes very
difficult to find a cyber café. Since I have been living in Jhabhua for so many years I would not
consider Jhabhua as an urban area. So, I can divide in three demographic areas semi-urban area,
semi-rural area and rural area.

In semi-urban area we can put Jhabhua and some Tehsil/block, like

Megnnagar, Ranapur etc and in semi-rural area we can put villages and Tehsil like Jobut,
Rambhapur etc, in rural areas there is wide range of rural area as compares to urban. There is 1.2
households in one village and which is one of the major drawbacks of Jhabhua. It is very difficult
to approach these villages where density of population is very low.

My next point is that Jhabhua is itself in MP but very near from Gujrat and Rajasthan so there is
a mix of culture in Jhabhua.

SOCIAL – ECONOMIC CHARACTERICSTICS OF JHABHUA

To describe Jhabhua consumption on the basis of sec system, I didn’t get data according to that
but here I am presenting some data from the book “Demography and health profile of tribal”
 But this data had given in 2003 and this is 2010 so we can imagine the changes and if I
talk about education, literacy rate 36.87% and this data of 2001 census so we can say that it has
been improving for e.g. I have done my schooling from hindi – medium government school and
the son of my cook is studying in English medium private school.

SOCIAL AND CULTURE- Jhabhua has a very old and strong culture. Most of the
population is a tribal one so they are poor, uneducated. They do not purchase packet but they
prefer to go with loose amount of product or they purchase in sachet because they were not rich
in the past so now when they have money they fear to use that money but like every human they
also have habit of copying others fort e.g. in my village rambapur there was no Tata safari till
2008 but in 2009 one household bought Tata safari and today in my village there are almost 5 to
6 safari. Almost every Household has its own two wheeler, TV, cooler etc.

In festivals like Dhanteras and diwali they purchase special things. They have a festival of gaay
gohari for that festival also they also do a lot of shopping. Same in holi they have bhugoria
before the holi at that time also they do a lot of purchasing. So these are the thing which makes
Jhabua different from others. Many Adivasi has converted from Hindu to Christian so here they
have different culture and because the mixture of Hindu and Christian culture there are the
chances for Indian marketer to sell their product’s in very large quantity in Christmas also.

So this is the culture of Jhabhua which contains too many different

culture in it. So they do purchase in slots but in the time of purchase they do lot of purchasing.
So that’s has culture affect Jhabhua’s consumer.

BRANDS IN JHABHUA

In Jhabhua people are not very much aware of brands even in urban areas
people are not much aware that is why there is very less sale of brands. In rural areas they don’t
prefer brands for e.g. if they want to purchase oil they would go for loose oil rather than selecting
any branded oil. In case of clothes no matter what is the brand they will buy it. But I think that
the consumer is not responsible for this because the retailer itself does not prefer brand due to
low margin. For eg in case of toothpastes in small villages like Kajli dungri people use branda
like pepsodent and colgate etc. So, these things show consumer behavior in Jhabhua. So the
consumer of Jhabhua purchases the brand which retailer has so to get services in Jhabhua rather
than go to customer brands should target the retailer. Even in case of rich class of Jhabhua they
are also not much aware of brands. They spend lots of money on local brand due to lack of
knowledge. And their single source of advertisement is TV which is also one of the reason of
lack of knowledge of brands. There are people who cannot purchase very frequently like hose
living in rajasthan while some people come under medium range like MP. So, it is difficult to
approach consumers of Jhabhua so the solution which comes in my mind is that company should
hire the localites of Jhabhua so it will be easy for them to approach typical tribal density of
Jhabhua.

And if I asked for describe one major brand of jhabua which is doing well in the jhabua I would
like to take a name of BSNL.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. formed in October, 2000, is World's 7th largest Telecommunications
Company providing comprehensive range of telecom services in India: CDMA mobile, GSM
Mobile, Internet, Broadband, Carrier service, MPLS-VPN, VSAT, VoIP services, IN Services
etc. Presently it is one of the largest & leading public sector unit in India.

has started 3G services in 290 cities and acquired more than 6lakh customers. It has planned to
roll out 3G services in 760 cities across the country in 2010-11.

BSNL SERVICES
BSNL LANDLINE, BSNL MOBILE, 3G SERVICES, BSNL WLL, INTERNET SERVICES,
BSNL BROADBAND, BSNL MANAGED NETWORK SERVICES BSNL MPLS-VPN,
ISDN, INTELLIGENT NETWORK, VIDEO CONFERENCING, AUDIO CONFERENCING,
WEB CONFERENCING SERVICES, ENTERPRISE SOLUTION, I NET, TELEX/
TELEGRAPH.

In JHABUA BSNL is one of the leading brand in telecom sector. About BSNL I would like to
say that BSNL is the initiater of the telecom services in jhabua. If I talk about the time of 2000
there very negligible customer of telecom services at that time BSNL took the responsibilities of
that and done well.

Seven year before from now BSNL was a only player of telecom in jhabua and it was very
difficult to get a sim of BSNL, but when other telecom industry came in jhabua BSNL increases
its connection and after that it became easy to get BSNL connection.

Even now a days BSNL has highest connection in jhabua, and the reason is that BSNL has
highest number of tower in jhabua also. In jhabua there are some area where no other connection
is available except BSNL.
Here are some processes of BSNL which it applies in jhbua

● Discovering what product, service or idea customers want

● Producing a product with the appropriate features and quality.

● Pricing the product correct

● Promoting the product; spreading the word about why customers should buy it.

● Selling and delivering the product into the hands of the customer.

BSNL first tried to discover the need of Jhabua and then it found that jhabua has a very poor
trible population so it came with reduced price connections in jhabua. BSNL knew like every
that people jhabua are very price sensitive people so it set its prices very carefully. Then BSNL
approaches the dealers of jhabua and small villages of jhabua so it became possible to approach
that customer also who lives in forest area because it was easy for local dealers to aooroach
them.
CONCLUSION :- At the end I would like to say that like every district jhabua is also a
aspiring district but till now it is being ignored by our marketers. People of jhabua have a great
potential and they want to spend the money which they have but due to lake of sources they can’t
excess there money in jhabua.

The trible young generation is highly aspire generation they do go to watch cinema every
satuday in dahod (Gujrat) , or Indore, they do prefer gujrat and city like indore for purchasing of
clothes.

One good example of aspiring jhabua is that An analysis of annual income and debt in 10
villages in the area revealed some outstanding facts: while the total annual income of these
villages is Rs 1.10 crore, the total debt is as much as Rs 4.18 crore -- four times the income! The
highest proportion of loans -- Rs 3.06 crore -- was sought for agriculture-related activities. Only
one-third of the loans were taken from banks and other financial institutions; the rest is to be paid
to local moneylenders or retailers. This example shows the need of the banks in rual area of
jhabua .

The children of jhabua are getting good education now there are free primary education for them,
there is mid day meal available for them in schools, govt. is providing free cycle for girls and
many trible poor student are getting advantage of it. And for higher education govt. gives
scholarship for that. So from that we can see the improvement in the social system .

So all these things shows that the status of the people of the jhabua is increasing , it is true that it
is not as good as compare to other cities but the point is that improvement is there and there so
many opportunities available in jhabua the only need is to identify those opportunities.

BSNL, MACROMAX, PEPSODENT, WHEEL, LIFEBOY . These are the brands which are
not very big brands but in jhabua they are major player so it shows that ther is chances of other
players also to go and set there brand in jhabua also.

So untapped areas of jhabua are healthcare, good apparels outlets, stores like reliance fresh,
cinema, transport facilities, food retail chain, etc.

Jhabua is city which is ready to buy the only need is a push which is expected from the govt. and
the marketers of india.
BIBLIOGRAPHY -: During our project to get data and some idea went through some
books and some sites.

1- Demography and Health profile tribals.

BY- Deepak kumar adak , Biswanath bhattacharya.

2- We are just like that only.

BY- Rama Bijapurkar

3- Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.

BY- C. K. Prahlad

Sec-“E” SUBMITTED BY-:

Ashish shukla