The effect of relationship marketing amongst the stakeholders of the East African breweries limited

Abstract

Customer relationships are the lifeblood of every good company. Relationships between a company and their customers, distributors, employees, referral sources, are vital to continued, sustained growth, and stability. Loyal relationships with these valued individuals make for a strong bottom line (Peck et al., 1999). As markets become increasingly competitive, price competition intensifies and reduced loyalty appears to be the norm. In many industries, marketing budgets are being restructured to devote more resources to defensive marketing, i.e., customer retention (Kotler, 1992). The objective of this study was to determine the effect of relationship marketing amongst the stakeholders of the East African Breweries Limited. This was a case study since the unit of analysis was one organisation. The population for this study were various stakeholders in EABL, these included, employees of EABL, Suppliers of EABL, Distributors of EABL product and bar owners who sell EABL product. The sample size was drawn from the target population of 394 possible respondents through purposive sampling to arrive at 94 respondents. The researcher used a questionnaire as primary data collection instrument. A content analysis and descriptive analysis was employed. The content analysis was used to analyze the respondents‟ views about the effects of relationship marketing. Descriptive statistics like weighted mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage was used to interprete the data. Tables and other graphical presentations as appropriate were used to present the data collected for ease of understanding and analysis. The study found that relationship marketing had positive impact among the various stakeholders of the East African Breweries Limited. The study revealed that East African Breweries Limited had developed enough systems to ensure that customers are served effectively and efficiently, this is an indication that EABL had developed enough systems to ensure that customers are served effectively and efficiently.