The state of social marketing in the Kenyan banking sector

Abstract

The academic thinking on social marketing draws mainly from developed countries. Most of the local studies have tended to address the broad concept of social responsibility. This study therefore sought to determine the state of social marketing in the Kenyan Banking sector Two objectives were pursued;

(i) to investigate the perceptions bank marketers have on social marketing

(ii) to establish the practices in the use of social marketing these banks are involved in. Primar.y data was collected through questionnaires that were dropped and picked later. Questions were both structured and unstructured. Likert type profiles and chi-square tests were used for further analysis. All the banks were analyzed together subsamples were determined based on size for the purposes of comparison in reasons of involvement social marketing and factors considered in choice of social activities. The findings reveal that bank marketers perceive social marketing as a supplementary tool to the traditional promotional mix elements. Level of awareness is high among the bank marketers. Commitment to social causes was also found to be high as respondents indicated they could do again and again whatever activities they were involved in. All banks whether srnall.. medium or large gave the same reasons for involvement in social marketing the main among these being ;to enhance (vii)

corporate image, to generate more customers ,to broaden customer base and to reach new segments. They all indicated considering the same factor,s in the choice of social activities namely; consistency of the

demographics of those supportive of the cause with those of the target market,customer'sperceptions, goals of the bank and social cultural factors. Limitations of this study were time inadequate literature and the fact that it focusedon only one sector.