The Rural Market and Urban Market Integration: A Marketing Panacea to Economic Development Issues of Zimbabwe

While many Zimbabweans are searching for foreign based economic opportunities for trade and exchange, the local market can also be used as a source of adding value through identifying and capitalising on the existing domestic absolute and comparative advantages. The development of linkages between rural markets and urban markets based on agricultural produce, farm implements, manufactured products and furniture products were used as case study products for identifying and evaluating comparative advantages in this study. A quantitative approach that collected and analysed rural and urban product units and price perceptions of 40 rural peasant farmers and 20 urban business people was used. The study established the comparative advantages that outweighed transport costs in the domestic rural and urban trade opportunities. Major products that attracted comparative advantages were cattle, goats, maize, ground nuts, farm implements, furniture and packaged food products. The research was unique due to its focus on stimulating inbuilt economic development projects.