Rural FMCG Survey: Primary Research in College

While studying at MDA Murshidabad in West Bengal, near the Bangladesh border, Rohit designed and ran a consumer survey for an FMCG company. The brief was to understand how rural villagers in the area thought about a specific product: how frequently they consumed it, how available it was locally, and what their overall relationship with it was.

He designed a questionnaire and went into the villages to gather responses. The finding that stood out was not about the product itself, but about the constraint underneath it. Families in these villages lacked basic necessities, including proper sanitation. When a household does not have its fundamental needs met, discretionary consumer products, even affordable ones, do not register as relevant.

The insight reframed the research question: the issue was not product awareness or distribution, it was that the target customer was not yet in a position to consider the product at all. Rohit presented the findings to his professors, who received them well.