Factors Influencing Mobile Services Adoption in Rural India

Abstract

Despite several attempts over the last few years, telecom infrastructure in rural areas is lagging behind the expected levels. There has been a phenomenal spurt in the growth of tele-density in the country, with the evolution of new wireless technologies, but the gap between the urban and rural tele-density has been increasing. Various policy initiatives are on the way to reduce this widening gap, which in turn, leaves the impression of tremendous potential for growth in the rural areas. To make the adoption and diffusion growth possible, the companies are constantly facing certain challenges in tackling rural market viz., understanding rural consumers, reaching products and services to remote rural locations and communicating with vastly heterogeneous rural audience. While mobile phone usage in rural areas is rather an unexamined genre in academic literature, this explanatory study investigates the factors influencing the rural consumer buying behaviour towards mobile phone and making choice of service providers prevailing in mobile phone markets. The data have been collected from the rural regions of Punjab, India during July to December 2005 and include 1357 respondents who have adopted mobile phones. The study concludes that rural people extremely desire the facilities and knowledge along with latest technology to make choice about mobile sets and service provider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]