Trinity Academia

NABARD is set up as an apex Development Bank with a mandate for facilitating credit flow for promotion and development of agriculture, small-scale industries, cottage and village industries, handicrafts, and other rural crafts. It also has the mandate to support all other allied economic activities in rural areas, promote integrated and sustainable rural development and secure prosperity of rural areas. In discharging its role as a facilitator for rural prosperity NABARD is entrusted with Providing refinance to lending institutions in rural areas.

The full form of NABARD is National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. The major functions of NABARD are as follows:

1. It acts as an apex body for meeting the credit needs of all types of agricultural and rural development.

2. It provides refinancing facilities to State Co-operative Banks (SCBs), Land Development Bank (LDBs), Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) and other approved financial institutions for financing rural economic activities.

3. It coordinates all agricultural and rural development activities with the objective of tying them up with planned development activities in the rural sector.

4. It provides short-term, medium-term and long-term credit to SCBs, LDBs, RRBs, and approved financial institutions.

5. It provides long-term assistance (not exceeding 20 years) to State Governments.

6. It has the responsibility of inspecting co-operative banks and RRBs.

7. It maintains a research and development fund to promote research in agriculture and rural development.

The promotional mix generally involves 5 components such as:

1) Personal selling: It is a part of the promotional mix which involves a one to one communication between buyers and customers (either potential or already customers). As it is a one-to-one communication, it generates direct contact with prospects and customers. Even though it is considered to be one of the most expensive forms of promotion, it is also considered to be the most successful as a seller-buyer relationship can be created and developed.

2) Advertising: One of the key factors in the promotional mix, which contributes to brand building and also how the market perceives the company, is advertising. It is always a big part of the promotional mix because of the far and wide reach of advertising and the message that you can send to your existing and potential customers. Good advertising can build a solid brand for the company. On the other hand, bad advertising with a wrong message can cause the brand or product to fail.

3) Direct marketing: While advertising targets a mass-audience, direct marketing targets prospects, and customers. Social media marketing, Email marketing, Internet marketing are all types of direct marketing used by companies. They have become important in the promotional mix lately because people are using internet far more than they used to a decade back. Companyâ??s employ direct marketing in order to engage in one-way communication with its customers, about product announcements, special promotions, order confirmations as well as customer inquiries.

4) Sales promotions: Sales promotions are one of the most common types of promotion used by companies. Their main purpose is to stimulate purchasing and sales. While it has the potential of increasing sales, it is also beneficial for informing prospects about new products on the market or just to recapture old or lost customers. Such examples include coupons, product samples, etc.

5) Public relations: Lastly, public relations enable an organization to influence a target audience and through this, create a favorable and positive image for the company. The company tries to connect with the audience by sharing information with them about the company and about the product. If anything goes wrong on the information front, the public relations department has to step forward and rebuild the public image.