Strategic planning within television companies in Kenya

Abstract

Formal strategic management can be traced back.to the 1950s in the United States of America. With time, it's popularity increased and spread to several developed countries. Strategic planning took a while to get to developing countries. Studies have been done in Kenya regarding strategic planning practices in several industries. However, in the television industry, there is no research done on the strategic planning practices. It is for this reason why the study was done. The population that was contacted for the study was all the seven companies that exist in the industry. All firms were contacted but the response that was received was from six companies. The interviewee was a senior manager in each company. The reason is that these were the key people in making strategic plans for the firms. Primary data was obtained through the use of a structured questionnaire. It was structured to meet the objective of the study. The questions were both open and closed The questionnaire was to be administered by the researcher. It was evident from the research that the firms in the television industry had formal strategic plans. The top management usually developed these plans. The planning time horizon for these plans was short periods due to the turbulence in the environment. Most of the firms had mission statements. These firms had set aside a percentage of the budget to strategic planning. They found it important to collect information on their competitors although just to a small extent. All the firms utilised a market-driven strategy approach.