Assessing the Influence of Integrated Marketing Communications on Sales Performance among Selected Private Security Firms in Nairobi County

Abstract

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) has emerged as a promising area of study in the past decade. The role that integrated marketing communication (IMC) play within an organization is an often misunderstood one. The field of marketing communications integrated or otherwise is regularly dismissed as superficial with its potential impact upon broader issues of strategy and “real” day to day business of an organization underestimated. It is against this reason that this research was being undertaken to assess the effects of integrated marketing communications on sales performance a case of selected private security firms in Nairobi County, Kenya. This study was guided by one general objective and five specific objectives: To establish how advertising, personal selling, direct marketing, sales promotion and public relations &publicity influence sales performance in the selected private security firms. The findings of this study benefited sales and marketing practitioners on the best practices on how implement (IMC). The study adopted survey research design, with selected private security firms’ staff being the target population. Purposive sampling and Simple random sampling was used to select a sample size of 78 employees. Self-administered questionnaires we reused as data collection instruments. The questionnaires were pre-tested for reliability and validity. Qualitative and quantitative data was analyzed by the help of Statistical package for social scientist’s software (SPSS). Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results were tabulated using frequency distribution tables. The study concluded that there was a positive relationship between independent variables (advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations and direct marketing) and dependent variable (Sales Performance of Security firms in Nairobi County) since their p value < 0.05 except for sales promotion. Findings show that advertising, direct marketing, personal selling, sales promotion and public relations enhance the company’s performance by enhancing customer attraction, customer loyalty, sales volumes, branch expansion and reminding customers of the company’s products. The study recommends that management take seriously strategies that can improve the execution of these IMC tools as they are crucial to performance of the company.