18 Journal of Rural and Industrial Development Volume 6 Issue 1 April 2018 Abstract India lives in villages! Rural India is a significant market as 68-70% of India lives in villages. Starting from the Father of Nation to industrialists, it has been predicted and noticed that the future of India lies in its villages. Many marketers (HUL, Dabur, LG, Chik Shampoo, Hero Honda, Mahindra, etc.) have made revenue of 35-45% from rural market 1 . Today, mobile phones are more than voice communication and have become most important and integral part of life due to various advantages in one product such as - alarm, radio, watching movie/videos, speaking, Whatsapp, access to Facebook, mails, information search, video call, etc. India being big in population and growing economy, with greater population living in villages with improved literacy rates, TV penetration, improved infrastructure, governments and industrialists schemes to improve and tap rural market, is thus a potential market for mobiles too. Rural market being a significant part of Indian economy, and telecom being a fastest growing sector, this paper focuses on understanding the buying behaviour of rural consumers towards mobile phones from the rural consumers of two villages of Mandya district in Karnataka. Keywords: Acceptability, Affordability, Availability, Awareness, Rural Market Rural Consumer Purchase Behaviour Towards Mobile Phone with Special Reference to Mandya District, Karnataka Kavitha R. Gowda* , K. S. Gopalakrishna** * Assistant Professor, Department of Management, CMS Business School, Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Email: profkavithargowda@gmail.com ** HOD of Commerce, B E S Evening College, Jayanagar, Bangalore, Karnataka, India. process. All these have an infuence on purchase decision- making process of rural consumers. Consumers buy several products for their daily needs as long as they exist. One such product which has become extremely important and a necessary product today is the mobile phone. According to McKinsey, 2007, communication accounts for 2% of spending by consumer’s today and is expanding fastest with a growth rate of 13%. The Indian mobile industry is growing fastest in the world and continues to add more mobile phone connections every month. This growth is noticed due to liberalization of telecommunication laws and policies. According to Gartner report, after China, India would be the fastest telephone market in Asia Pacifc. Due to growing competition between the mobile phone manufacturers as well as competition between the service providers, the prices of mobile phones and the call rates have dropped, thus enabling many consumers to buy the products and use the services. Subscriber rates are growing further, every month. The consumers are also spending on buying mobile phones with better technology. It was predicted that mobile phone subscriber base would grow from over 500 million in 2013 to over 800 million in 2019 (number of mobile phone users in India from 2013 to 2019, www.statista.com). In India, 13 million new connections were added in the third quarter of 2015, followed by China which added 7 million, the US (6 million), Myanmar (5 million), and Nigeria added 4 million subscribers, according to Ericsson Mobility Report for 2015 (Business Standard, 18 th November 2015). Globally, the subscriptions of smartphones are expected to increase from 3.4 billion in 2015 to 6.4 billion by 2021. India is pegged at 77% penetration of mobile 1 https://www.ibef.org/industry/indian-rural-market.aspx Introducton Understanding the consumer is very essential for all marketers in the world. Thus, India and its rural consumers are not an exception, but are most important as a major population lives in villages. Rural consumers are different due to culture, purchasing power, caste, social groups, traditions, and beliefs, which impact the decision-making