Promotional Strategies, Government Policies and Sales Performance of State Corporations in Kenya

Abstract

The promotion's goal is to boost demand for a company's goods or services. A promotional strategy is used to inform, persuade, or remind potential customers about a product. Making people aware, enticing people to try items, offering information, keeping loyal consumers, and product usage are all examples of promotional goals. Other aims include finding prospective clients and even training consumers about products and future services. This study aimed to determine the effects of promotional strategy on the sales performance of state corporations in Kenya and further explore whether government policy mediates that relationship. Specifically, the study sought to achieve the following research objectives: to investigate the influence of sales promotion, advertisement, public relations and personal selling on sales performance. Additionally the study established the moderating effect of government policy on the promotional strategy and sales performance relationship. The research embraced positivism research philosophy and a cross-sectional survey design. The population comprised three heads from sales, marketing and finance departments from 55 commercial state corporations in Kenya who were purposively selected. A questionnaire was utiled to collect data, and analysed through a social science statistical tool (SPSS) version 26. Descriptive and descriptive statistics were used in the analysis. The results indicated that at the bivariate level advertisement affected sales performance, public relations affected sales performance, sales promotion affected sales performance, and personal selling affected sales performance.The equation illustrates that Sales promotion shows (F (1,4) = 28.998, P value=0.000, Eta ɳ2 = 0.751), Public relations (F (1,7) = 1163.464, P value =0.000, Eta ɳ2 = .994), Advertisement (F (1,8) = 31.784, P value =0.001, Eta ɳ2 = .882), Personal selling (F (1,5) = 9.582, P value =0.011, Eta ɳ2, Government policy (F (1,6) = 81.636, P value = .000, Eta ɳ2 = 0.938). However, in a combined set-up, that included public relations, sales promotion, personal selling and advertisement, it was established that only personal selling and advertisementwere found to significantly affect the sales performance of state corporations in Kenya with advertisement being the most significant followed by personal selling. Moreover, the study established that government policy did not moderately affect the promotion strategies and sales performance association in the state corporations in Kenya. The study filled the existing research gap and concluded that promotional strategies under investigation affected sales performance o f state corporations in Kenya. The research suggested that managers of the state corpoartions in Kenya should focus on advertisement and personal selling to increase sales performance. It was recommended that state corporations should use various channels in advertising relying on the usage of printed media including magazines, advertise their organization to persuade customers to use their services, control their advertising campaign to ensure effectiveness and ensure the advertising message is consistent throughout the various advertising channels.Concerning, sales promotion, state corporations should and give free or sample goods to their customers. Concerning personal selling, the study recommends that state corporations should put customers into consideration by understanding their needs. Regarding public relation, the study recommends corporations to use themes of public interest to increase contact to the receivers, usage public relations to build corporate image and lastly, use public relations to create and control brand news.