The Influence Of Multichannel Marketing On Market Penetration By Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies In Kenya
Abstract
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most stable and fastest growing industries in the world. In the last few years, this industry’s revenue has surpassed the one trillion U.S. dollars mark. Despite this massive growth, researchers and scholars across the globe are yet to dedicate their studies to understand how this industry can take advantage of multichannel marketing, which is perceived to be the future of marketing. This study therefore aimed at contributing to the knowledge of this subject matter specifically in regard to multinational pharmaceutical companies in Kenya. The study objective was to analyze the influence of multichannel marketing on market penetration by pharmaceutical multinational companies in Kenya. The researcher sought to find out the different marketing channels that multinational pharmaceutical companies are using to penetrate the Kenyan market and also remain relevant and competitive in the long run. To achieve this objective, the researcher utilized cross-sectional study and descriptive research design to collect, organize and analyze data, and present the research findings. Study population of ten multinational pharmaceutical companies which had functional sales and marketing department locally was used. Questionnaires were used to collect primary data and were sent to at least six people in each of the ten companies including: commercial directors, product managers, sales managers and sales executives, making the total target population to be sixty. 37 questionnaires were filled and returned, representing a response rate of 62%. Secondary data used was from company’s publications and websites in addition to Pharmacy and poisons board website. Data collected was analyzed and findings presented in form of graphs, pie charts and tables. It was found out that multichannel marketing in pharmaceutical industries is not as effective as expected in all other industries. This is because pharmaceutical industry, have a number of factors that influence their consumers’ responsiveness to different marketing channels. In addition, the research findings reveal that despite contemporary marketing channels gaining traction in different industries, the pharmaceutical industry perceive the traditional marketing channels as the most effective channels to penetrate the Kenyan market. The study concluded with recommendations on the need to conduct further study on whether multinational pharmaceutical corporations in Kenya rely on the marketing strategies in their mother countries when developing marketing strategy for a country such as Kenya. In addition, the study recommends that there is a need for multinational pharmaceutical companies to study on ways of increasing their use of contemporary multichannel marketing to reach out to their target consumers.
Publisher
University Of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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