| dc.description.abstract | The study reported in this thesis is an inquiry into
how the Kenyan business community understands the nature, r81e
and purpose of export marketing research, and how it ranks and
executes this function. The basic premise of the study is that
successful export marketing is a function of export research.
The rationale for the study arises from the fact that, while
Kenya government policy is strongly in favor of promoting both
a strong export-oriented economy, and a competent export-
oriented, indigenous business community, very little is known
regarding the business community's conceptions of, arid approaches
to, international trade.
Unless the government and the rest of the interested
parties (businessmen, executive trainers and academicians) get
clear account of the state of export research, in Kenya, all
efforts by public and:private enterprise to make Kenya A self sustaining
export economy, may be no more than "a cry in the
wilderness", This study is, therefore, an attempt to present
this much-needed account, and fill in the gap currently existing
in the state of marketing information.
The survey reported here entailed sampling some 118
manufacturing firms, located in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and
Thika, four of he five major ind trial centres in Kenya.
The data collected were subjected to one-way analyses of
variance and tested for strength of relationship using
epsilon, on two independent and one dependent variables
namely, knowledge of export research; nature of existing
research program and success in export marketing, respectively.
Inter st was focused on six categories of respondents namely,
exporters, non-exporters, 'successful exporters, 'not-so successful'
exporters, African (indigenous) businessmen, and
non-indigenous businessmen. Four major operational
hypotheses were tested. In addition, some 22 service/advisory
organizations were surveyed to assess their contribution to
the provision of international marketing intelligence and
their opinions of the performance of Kenyan businessmen of
the export marketing research function.
The thesis also advances a conceptual model suggested
to assist local businessmen to understand and organise
their international marketing intelligence operations. | en |
