Integrated Marketing Communication And Performance Of Unilever Kenya Limited

ABSTRACT

This study sought to establish how integrated marketing communication affects the performance of Unilever Kenya Limited. In every result driven organization, achieving greater performance is foremost on the minds of both sales leaders and finance executives hence the need for an organization to properly coordinate and integrate its marketing communication programs in order to deliver a clear, consistent, credible and competitive message to the targeted and potential audience about itself and its products.IMC is a strategy in which different tools of business communication work together to maximize the impact they will have on the target audience. The general objective of this study was to establish the relationship between integrated marketing communication and the performance of Unilever Kenya Limited. The study was undertaken to research on how the components of IMC which include advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations and personal selling affect performance of Unilever Kenya. The specific objectives included to find out the effect of advertising on performance of Unilever Kenya Ltd,to determine the effect of direct marketing on performance of Unilever Kenya Ltd, to assess how sales promotion affect performance of Unilever Kenya Ltd,to establish the effect of public relations on performance of Unilever Kenya Ltd and to examine the effects of personal selling on performance of Unilever Kenya Ltd.The study was anchored on the theory of persuasion, theory of reasoned Action and theory of Dagmar.The target population was the 164 staff in Unilever Kenya who work at head office. Stratified random sampling was used to sample 82 of the employees from Head office constituting 50% of the population. The main objective was to select a representative and non-biased sample to increase the reliability and validity of the findings. Questionnaires were used as tools for data collection. The questionnaires were presented to the research supervisor to check on their validity and a pilot study conducted to enhance reliability of the instruments. Analysis of data was done using SPSS Version 21 software and presented using frequency distribution tables, bar charts and pie charts for easier understanding. The study will assist FMCG manufacturing companies and retailers to understand the importance of sales promotion practices and their influence on performance of an organization. It will also serve as a reference to future researchers and scholars.