A Survey of Consumers Towards Plastic Packaging Used by Firms in the Dairy Industry in Kenya

Abstract

Dairy industry in Kenya has se en lot o f changes since its liberalization in 1993 .This made players in the industry from 1 to 4 by 2004. As a result of many entrants, competition became stiff and firms had to come up with various competitive strategies, packaging being one of them. Recently there has been an increase in the use of plastic packaging or productstin the dairy industry. The objective of this research was to establish the perception of cusumers on plastic packaging of dairy product in Kenya. Diferent people perceive issues differently. This case also applies in packaging of product. This was a descriptive survey, which targeted consumers of dairy products in Nairobi. One hundred consumers were randomly selected from key retail outlets. A semistructured questionnaire was used to collect primary data. Administration of the questionnaire was of personal interview. A total of 100 respondents were targeted but a response rate of 90% was achieved. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics, i.e. Frequencies, percentages, mean score and standard deviation. Plastic packaging was perceived by most consumers of dairy products as good based on the attributes above. Most of the consumers preferred plastic packaging compared to other packaging materials. As recommendations to the dairy firm in Kenya is to continue using plastic packaging and continue modifying its attributes to meet their custimers need. Therefore this acts a motivator the dair industry players to continue using plastic packing as compared to other forms of packaging The main limitition of this study was unwillingness of customers to provide the required information and illiteracy. A similar research should becarried out forcusing on other industries and also as a case study