Application of Marketing Mix Strategies and the Effect on Market Performance of Motor Vehicle Dealers in Kenya

The environment in which organizations operate is constantly changing with different micro and macro-economic factors influencing the organization’s performance. Coping with the increasingly competitive environment has called on firms to rethink their marketing strategies. The need to respond to market changes on a daily basis, and the difficulty of predicting the direction of such changes means that organizations must strategically focus on their core competences and capabilities. The World Bank report (2015) clearly indicates that motor vehicles imports in Kenya have increased with 2.0% in the year 2015. However, this ratio keeps on changing depending on macro-economic factors such as increase or decrease on imports duty. Entry of new competitors into the market has caused a drastic change not only to the specific companies operations, but also to their products and services in the demanding market. The competition in the markets has created an attention for these companies to review their marketing strategies in order to remain relevant in the market. One of the determinant of performance is marketing mix focusing on the product, its price, its position and how well it is known by its customers. Studies show that application of marketing mix strategies influence the level of sales. However, minimal research exists on this relationship. Therefore, this study sought to establish the effect of marketing practices on market performance of Motor vehicle Dealers in Kenya. The study adopted four major practices namely; product strategies, price strategies, positioning strategies and promotion strategies and market performance as the dependent variable. Porters Five forces model, Resource based view model, stakeholders’ theory and pricing theory were applied to explain the empirical literature. The study area was in Nairobi County, while target population of the study was the 7 major Dealers in cars. The study sampled at least one respondent from each management offices in the marketing department. Therefore, the study target a total of 21 respondents. Data was collected using self-administered questionnaires. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations will be used to analyse the data. A regression model was used to measure and explain the relationship of the study variables. The study concludes that the four strategies namely; product strategies, price strategies, positioning strategies and promotion strategies had a significant effect on performance. The study recommends that to achieve a high output, there is need to utilise all the four strategies as each has a specific contribution to the performance. Keywords: Marketing mix, Product, Pricing, Positioning, Promotion, market performance, motor vehicle dealers DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/11-27-06 Publication date:September 30th 201