The communication techniques used by people and organisations have changed beyond recognition in barely two decades. For many, it is difficult to imagine a world without the internet, social media and smartphones. As a result, marketers have been presented with a profusion of technology to target customers. This research study looks at the markedly different communications landscape in developing nations, where multinationals cannot assume the availability of modern-day marketing communications tools, basic infrastructure, or that consumers are literate. Marketing in the Dark examines the methods used to reach consumers in the world’s “media dark regions” with an emphasis on Unilever’s Project Shakti in India.

From a country plagued with chronic food shortage, the Green Revolution turned India into a food-grain self-sufficient nation within the decade of 1968-1978. By contrast, the decade of 1995-2005 witnessed a spate in suicides among farmers in many parts of the country. These tragic incidents were symptomatic of the severe stress and strain that the agriculture sector had meanwhile accumulated. The book recounts how the high achievements of the Green Revolution had overgrown to a state of this ‘agrarian crisis’. In the process, it also brings to fore the underlying resilience and innovativeness in the sector which enabled it not just to survive through the crisis but to evolve and revive out of it. The need of the hour is to create an environment that will enable the sector to acquire the robustness to contend with the challenges of lifting levels of farm income and coping with Climate Change. To this end, a multi-pronged intervention strategy has been suggested. Reviving public investment in irrigation, tuning agrarian institutions to the changed context, strengthening of market institution for better farm-market linkage and financial access of farmers, and preparing the ground for ushering in technological innovations should form the major components of this policy paradigm.

Marketing and management processes across industries can be very similar, but contexts vary where political intervention, public interest and local sustainability are involved. The rural business setting is especially intricate due to the assortment of different business opportunities, ranging from traditional agriculture, to tourism enterprise and even high-tech business. Including pedagogical features and full colour throughout, this new textbook provides an engaging and thought-provoking resource for students and practitioners of tourism, rural business and related industries.

Marketing is of interest to students of marketing, or marketers of tangibles or non tangibles.