*Corresponding author: Parala Venkata Sree Vyshnavi Department of Business Management, Vikrama Simhapuri University, Andhra Pradesh, India ISSN: 0976-3031 RESEARCH ARTICLE INVISIBLE MARKETING STRATEGIES, STILL HOPELESS WELLBEING OF THE HANDLOOM WEAVERS Parala Venkata Sree Vyshnavi and Suja Sasidharan Nair Department of Business Management, Vikrama Simhapuri University, Andhra Pradesh, India DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24327/ijrsr.2020.1101.5028 ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Handloom sector has its unique place in the textile industry. The weavers’ hard and skilful work accompanied byproper marketing strategies can yield good profits. But, the current scenario gives an entirely different picture of the sector with weavers earning pitiful wages. The wellbeing of the weavers is a big question inspite of the invisible marketing strategies being employed by the weavers. So, this paper aims at answering the question: Do the marketing strategies of the handloom textiles (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) created wellbeing among the handloom weavers in SPS Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh during the years 2018-2019? INTRODUCTION Handloom industry exists in India since ancient times. It depicts India’s culture and heritage. Andhra Pradesh is the third-largest cotton producer in the country as per Textile and Apparel Promotion Policy 2005-2010 4 . 43,31,876 weavers depend on the handloom industry with 23, 77,331 handlooms in India while 3, 55,838 weavers depending on the handloom industry with 1, 24,714 handlooms in Andhra Pradesh as per handloom census 2009-10 (as on 30.6.2017) 1 . The textile industry has a 2% of GDP (at factor cost) as per strategic plan 2012-17 by Ministry of Textiles 6 . The share of handlooms in total production of cloth in India is 15.31% (7638 million sq. Meters) in 2015-16, and the ratio of handloom to powerloom in terms of cloth production is 1:5.21 as per Ministry of Textiles, Annual Report 2016-17 2 . This industry has an export of handloom products worth Rs. 2392.21 crores to the top twenty countries including USA, Italy, UK, U Arab EMTS, Spain and Germany in 2016-17 as per Handloom Export Promotion Council of India 7 . Hence the handloom sector has a significant contribution to the national income of India. So, it is essential to have better marketing practices in the handloom industry. However, at present, handlooms are facing many bottlenecks like rising input costs, sparse credit coverage, lack of innovation and limited dynamism in the field of marketing, inadequate institutional coverage and management, poor policy dissemination and information gaps, infrastructure gaps, lack of proper monitoring and evaluation, lack of education, skills and research and training, limited role of private enterprise as per Planning Commission 2012-2017 3 . Hence there is a need to focus on the marketing practices being carried out from weavers to consumers and thereby identifying the loopholes or identifying the successful strategies. There is also a need to enquire into the recent trends: E-commerce, Indian handloom brand, collaboration with FDCI and 5-12% Goods and Services Tax on handlooms as per discussions in the GST Council Meeting held on 3rd June, 2017 5 . Hence, the need aroused to study the marketing strategies prevailing in the handloom sector. Review of literature Chandan (2017) 8 conducted a study in the silk handloom industry in Nadia district of West Bengal. The main objective of this study was to make a situational analysis of the handloom workers by focusing on the problems of the handloom weavers of Nadia district. He recommended several measures like awareness campaign, financial literacy programme, SHG and consortium formation, common facility centre, dye house, market exposure to upgrade the present situation of the handloom industry. Available Online at http://www.recentscientific.com International Journal of Recent Scientific Research International Journal of Recent Scientific Research Vol. 11, Issue, 01(D), pp. 36931-36940, January, 2020 Copyright © Parala Venkata Sree Vyshnavi and Suja Sasidharan Nair, 2020, this is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: 10.24327/IJRSR CODEN: IJRSFP (USA) Article History: Received 4 th October, 2019 Received in revised form 25 th November, 2019 Accepted 18 th December, 2019 Published online 28 th January, 2020 Key Words: handloom weavers, marketing strategies, problems faced, counts and designs