Marketing Orientation and Sales Growth: a Case of Large Manufacturing Firms in the Food Industry in Nairobi

Abstract

The study reported here analyzed the various programs and methods of marketing orientation that firms in the food industry in Nairobi had adopted. The study also explored whether firms that had adopted more marketing orientation programs had better sales growth, The basic premise of the study was that the increases in sales volumes in the increasingly competitive environment depended to a large extent on the degree to which the organization was able to apply the marketing concept in its marketing function. The need for the study arose out of the fact that the food industry in the Nairobi market was facing saturation and stiff competition from other foreign imported foodstuffs were flooding the market and seemed to gain more customer acceptance than locally manufactured foodstuffs. Customer acceptance of imported food stuffs was due to the fact that foreign manufacturers considered the customer the focal point of their operations and thus made products that suited a wide variety of people by diversifying their product range whereas local manufacturers relied more on a production and product orientation thus making whatever was easier to make and then selling it to willing customers. The increase in imported foodstuffs brought on by the advent of liberalization caused the local manufacturers to change their orientation in order to survive in a market where customers had a wide range of products to choose from and imported foodstuffs seemed to satisfy their needs more adequately than locally manufactured products. Nairobi is the most affected by these changes in the environment because it is the capital city. The majority of the population in Nairobi is urban, more enlightened and tend to have more often than not changing requirements. The study was a census survey of all local manufacturing food industries Nairobi. Data was collected using a structured, undisguised questionnaire and analyzed and presented using tables, proportions and percentages. In conclusion, the findings of the study revealed that firms that had adopted more marketing orientation programs did have better sales growth than those that had less programs