Competitive Marketing Competencies of Dairy Cooperatives in Machakos County, Kenya

Abstract

The objective of the study was to explore the competitive marketing competencies of Dairy Cooperatives in Machakos County, Kenya. The competencies were explored with respect to customer perspective competencies, competitors’ perspective competencies, pricing perspective competencies, promotions perspective competencies, and distribution perspective competencies. The study was a qualitative descriptive research. Data was collected through face to face interviews with an interview guide being used as the primary tool for data collection. A census of all the 15 Dairy Cooperatives registered by Lower Eastern Dairy Cooperatives Alliance (LEDCA) was conducted. Thus the unit of observation was the cooperative board and the unit of analysis, the cooperative. The analysis involved categorization of the responses into common themes. Firstly, with respect to customer’s perspective competencies, the study concludes for low levels of customer perspective marketing competencies. The cooperatives do not conduct regular market surveys, as such this limits their knowledge of customer behavior. Equally, apart from product quality, there is limited adoption of unique differentiating customer retention and attraction strategies among the cooperatives. Secondly, based on the competitors’ perspective competencies, the study concludes for low competencies in competitive marketing. Despite the cooperatives being well aware of their sources of competition, competitors’ weaknesses and strengths, the capability to executive a mix of strategies to exploit competitors’ weaknesses and overcome competitors’ strength is limited. For instance, while 50% indicated that low product quality was a major weakness by the competitors’, only about half (27%) responded by improving quality of their products to take advantage of this weakness. Similarly, while 16% identified poor customer relations by the competitors, only 8% responded by improving their customer relation to take advantage of this weakness. Thirdly, based on pricing perspective competencies, the study concludes for inadequacies in the pricing competencies among the cooperatives. Pricing decisions are made in isolation and do not take into account strategic intents of the cooperatives and optimization of the marketing mix. Fourthly, the study concludes for inadequacies in the promotion competencies. Sales personnel are rarely recruited competitively, lack requite skills, are ill prepared for the job, and are paid daily/weekly wages. Advertisements lack adequate budgets, are at best unstructured and irregular word of mouth. Finally, the study concludes that the current distribution competency demonstrated by the cooperatives match the current distribution needs. The current sales demand is well served with the distribution systems in place. The cooperatives are relatively small with most distributions being in small quantities and by use of motorbikes. Poor road conditions present the main challenge but mainly during wet seasons. A factor which does not persist for a long period. For practice, the study recommends targeted regular market surveys to create an understanding of the customer behavior for better niche or differentiated marketing. Secondly the study recommends adoption of marketing strategies that aims at exploiting the known competitors’ weakness and overcoming of competitors’ strength. Thirdly, the study recommends an adoption of an optimal marketing mix. Further, adoption of best human resource management practices such as competitive recruitment, structured inductions and trainings of personnel, clear separation of roles as well as stable remunerations should be employed to increase staff capability and morale. The also recommends explicit planning and budgeting for product promotion. For further studies, expanding the study to include cooperatives outside Machakos would be critical in providing additional empirical evidence for generalization of the findings. The study also looked only at the marketing perspective, other parameters such as strategic planning and operational perspectives should be explored.