Promotional strategies applied to drive competitiveness at Essar Telecom Kenya

Abstract

Promotional Strategy seeks to maintain or increase the market share of current products of a company. This can be achieved by a combination of competitive strategies like pricing, advertising, sales promotion and dedicating more resources to personal selling. Promotional strategies seek to secure company dominance of the market. The purpose of this study was to identify promotional strategies used to drive competitiveness by Essar Telecom Kenya Limited. The study adopted a case study design. The researcher used both primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected using interview guide with open ended questions. The respondents for this study included senior managers in the company. Being a case study, conceptual content analysis was used to analyze the data. The study found that the company has engaged in both pull and push strategy as a form of promotional strategy. Sales promotions, personal selling, direct marketing are some of the promotional methods applied. The study recommends that although the company has been successful in neutralizing the challenges brought about by competition in the telecommunication industry, the company should engage in improving service and products quality as a response to its competitors’ strategies whose products and services are much better. The study further recommends that Essar Telecom Kenya Limited should heavily advertise itself in other countries and diversify in other countries that are not in East Africa in order to take advantage of economic developments in many countries as a result of globalization. The study recommends that further research should be done on the other companies in the Telecommunication industry so as to get comprehensive information on how the other players in the industry are able to remain competitive in the market.