An Investigation Into The State Of The Marketing Concept In The Television Broadcast Media In Kenya

Abstract

This study is concerned with the state of the marketing concept in the television broadcast media in Kenya. The study was aroused by the fact that the liberalization of the industry has brought about an intense and unprecedented competition, which calls for the adoption of better strategies to ensure a Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA). Given that intense competion in the industry is a recent phenomenon, the researcher is not aware of any study that has been done to document the state of the marketing concept in the industry. The objectives of the study were: (i) To determine whether the media firms had adopted the marketing concept. (ii) To determine the extent to which the media firms had adopted the marketing concept. The study was a census survey because of the small number of the television stations in operation as at July 2000. Primary data was collected by the use of questionnaires, which were distributed to the marketing managers and the production managers. The variables investigated were customer orientation, intergrated marketing, target marketing, profitability, and competitor orientation. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics - percentages, means, frequencies, standard deviations and cross tabulations. (ix) . The findings from the two categories of respondents contradicted each other. The marketing managers indicated that 71% of the stations had adopted the marketing concept to a large extent (71.2%). On the other hand, the production managers indicated that 57% of the stations had adopted the marketing concept to a very large extent (76.2%).