Industry overview
What is shaping agriculture
Agriculture supports a large share of rural livelihoods, and its buying decisions are made close to the soil: at the village dealer, the cooperative and the neighbouring lead farmer. Seasonality, weather and credit shape almost every choice a farmer makes.
- Purchase decisions cluster in short pre-sowing windows
- Trusted dealers and lead farmers carry more weight than advertising
- Digital payments, agri-fintech and crop insurance are changing how farmers buy
Client background
A fertiliser manufacturer, working in Eight states across India. Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.
- Organisation
- A fertiliser manufacturer
- Sector
- Agriculture
- Team engaged
- IT & Development
- Services
- Quantitative research, Offline data collection (CATI & CAPI), Data analytics & dashboards
Client challenge
The client invested heavily in rural advertising and farmer meetings but had no consistent way to see whether awareness and preference were moving. Each region ran its own surveys, with different questions and samples, so results could not be compared.
Research objectives
- Deliver on the brief: building a rural brand tracker for a fertiliser company.
- Design around the real needs of farmers.
- Define requirements and success criteria the solution would be tested against.
- Deliver a reliable, secure solution the team can run and extend.
Target audience
The work focused on 2,400 farmers.
- farmers2,400
Audiences we typically reach in agriculture
Farmers and growersAgri-input dealersCooperatives and FPOsAgronomists and extension workersAgri-fintech users
Geographic coverage
Coverage: Eight states across India. Market: India.
- India
Research methodology
An iterative delivery approach: discovery, design, build and test in short cycles, with the client reviewing each step.
- 1Brief
- 2Telephone and face-to-face surveys
- 3Quarterly tracking
- 4Insight
We designed one tracker with consistent questions, quotas by state and farm size, and a mix of telephone interviews for speed and face-to-face interviews for farmers without reliable phone access. Results flowed into a dashboard the marketing team could filter by state, crop and channel.
Quantitative researchOffline data collection (CATI & CAPI)Data analytics & dashboards
Sampling strategy
- farmers
- 2,400
- Users and stakeholders from every affected team took part in discovery workshops and acceptance testing.
Data collection
- Requirements were gathered through workshops, process walk-throughs and a review of existing systems and data.
Data quality & validation
- Peer code review on every change
- Automated and manual testing
- User-acceptance testing with the client
- Release checklist and rollback plan
Data analysis
- Usage and performance monitoring after launch
- Defect and support-ticket trends
- Process time before and after
Key findings
- For the first time, the client could compare regions on the same basis and see which activities moved preference.
A tracker’s value comes from consistency; changing questions every wave destroys the ability to see trends.
Recommendations
- Build on the core insight: a tracker’s value comes from consistency; changing questions every wave destroys the ability to see trends.
- Focus effort where the evidence was strongest: for the first time, the client could compare regions on the same basis and see which activities moved preference.
Business impact
- Marketing reallocated spend away from a television campaign that showed little effect in two states and towards village meetings that consistently performed better.
Deliverables & next steps
- Insight report and management presentation
- Cleaned data file and data tables
- Interactive dashboard
- Deployed solution with documentation and handover
- Support and maintenance plan
- Continue the routine and review results every period.
- A natural follow-on question: how do credit and insurance shape adoption?
Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.