Marketing Strategies and Their Effects in Sales Expansion in Organisation
CHAPTER ONE
Objectives of the Study
To achieve the study purpose; the research addressed the following specific objectives:
- To establish the relationship between product development strategy and sales expansion at Tembo Steels Nigeria Limited.
- To evaluate the relationship between price strategy and sales expansion at Tembo Steels Nigeria Limited.
- To determine the relationship between place strategy and sales expansion at Tembo Steels Nigeria Limited.
- To examine the relationship between promotion strategy and sales expansion of Tembo Industries.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Theoretical Foundation
This section examines the various theories that were used to inform the study on the effects of marketing strategies on sales expansion. The study was guided by the following theories; marketing mix theory and theory of push and pull.
Marketing Mix Theory
According to Grönroos, (1994) the theory of Marketing Mix was coined by Borden. The theory is still used today to make important decisions that lead to the execution of a marketing plan. The idea of a marketing mix theory is to organize all aspects of the marketing plan around the habits, desires and psychology of the target market. Marketing Mix Theory combines a number of components in order to strengthen and solidify a product‟s brand and to help sell the product or service. The components combined by this are products, price, promotion and place forming the Four P‟s. These four P’s are the parameters that the marketing manager can control, subject to the internal and external constraints of the marketing environment. The goal is to make decisions that centers the four P’s on the customers in the target market in order to create perceived value and generate a positive response.
The marketing mix framework was particularly useful in the early days of the marketing concept when physical products represented a larger portion of the economy (Grönroos, 1994). Today, with marketing more integrated into organizations and with a wider variety of products and markets, some authors have attempted to extend its usefulness by proposing a fifth P, such as packaging, people, process, etc. Today however, the marketing mix most commonly remains based on the 4 P’s. Despite its limitations and perhaps because of its simplicity, the use of this framework remains strong and many marketing textbooks have been organized around it.
Push and Pull Theory
The Push and Pull theory of customer service are two theories, the “Push” theory and the “Pull” theory. The theory of push pull has been most often applied to marketing processes by businesses and organizations. Push or pull is defined by whether the customer or the business initiates the activity. According to Zmud (1984) the theory of push and pull was developed in 1911 by Fredrick Winslow Taylor in his work on “The Principles of Scientific Management.” Business took his ideas to heart and started focusing on becoming more efficient than their competition. This led to determining the needs of the potential customer and pushing the solutions out to those customers. In today’s, market pushing solutions are sometimes seen by the customer as intrusive or overlooked by the customer as the solution gets lost due to information overload. Many companies are moving away from the push theory to a pull theory. That is, they are providing the information and solutions in a generally accessible format and allowing the customer to determine what best suits their needs.
One of the base assumptions about pushing solutions (products, information, etc.) to customers is that the business or organization can anticipate the needs of the customer in advance of the need and prepare the solution ahead of time (Cooper & Kleinschmidt, 2015). Organizations that emphasize the push theories often do so to increase efficiency. They believe that if, for instance, they create the penultimate user manual that they will cover all of the questions the customer might have and thereby limit the amount of contact the customer needs to make to the organization. As well, by using a push model the organization can limit those areas for which service is provided which again might provide efficiency in the training of support personnel. This model has become more difficult to implement as organizations are believe they may be sacrificing effectiveness for the efficiency.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Design
Kothari (2004) defines research design as framework that shows how problems under investigation are solved. A descriptive survey is a design that involves establishing what is happening as far as a particular variable is concerned. This research adopted a descriptive research survey to determine the effects of marketing strategies on sales expansion in an organization in Nigeria. As noted by Mugenda and Mugenda (2003), descriptive design is the precise measurement and reporting of the characteristics of the phenomena under investigation and describes phenomena, situations and events. This is mainly because the focus of the research is to gain an understanding and insight on the effects of marketing strategies on sales expansion in an organization.
Target Population
In this study the target population were business managers operating at the Central Business District in Abuja. To come up with an appropriate study sample, the study utilized stratified sampling technique where business managers were classified into different business areas including food and restaurants and other non-food item businesses. The rationale behind the selection of the stratified sampling was because the businesses are evenly distributed across the Central Business District and this ensured collection of unbiased data. This helped to enhance the chances of participation among potential participants (Kothari, 2004).
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Summary of the Findings
The study findings show that considerable number of Businesses in Abuja County had adopted product development strategies, there existed a strong positive significant correlation between sales expansion of SMEs and product development strategies, SMEs offered a broad product and that SMEs are efficient in meeting customer wants. The findings are in support of the research by Doyle (2009) that the power of product development has helped SMEs to and while enduring competitive. The findings also conform to Njoroge‟s (2015), argument that product innovation process provides the means for safeguarding and improving quality and for saving costs. The study further revealed that SMEs developed and test their products to confirm their adaptability and suitability to the target customers and that SMEs have products with a broad market appeal. The study also confirms with Otieno (2015) that SMEs should learn, adopt and reorient itself to the changing environment product innovation process.
Conclusion
Based on the study results, the study concludes that considerable number of Businesses in Abuja County had adopted product development strategies, adoption of product development strategies resulted to a positive significant effect on the sales expansion in an organization in Nigeria. Product development strategy helps SMEs achieve business goals, such as entering new markets, selling more to existing customers or winning business from competitors.
Recommendations
Based on the study analysis the study recommends that Businesses in Nigeria should continually embrace product development strategy as this strategy provided a framework for creating new products or improving the performance, cost or quality of existing products.
The Businesses in Nigeria should continually adopt pricing strategies (market penetration pricing, premium pricing, price skimming and economy pricing) as these tactics were found to have a positive impact on sales expansion. Although a successful pricing strategy can increase revenue and profitability, careful planning is also essential to minimize the risk of costly mistakes related each specific strategy.
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