PERSONAL SELLING STRATEGY AND MARKET SHARE: EVIDENCE FROM WATER PRODUCING FIRMS IN GHANA

ABSTRACT Personal selling is a marketing strategy which contrary to classical promotion such as advertising with one-way communication, permits communicative interchanges between the seller and buyer. It is of primary importance in the marketing of commodities which due to their complexity require some form of explanation or demonstration to the buyer. Its usefulness as argued in the literature is said to be more pronounced in industrial marketing and services compared to products in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) markets where little time and effort is spent to obtain the product by the consumer. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between personal selling strategy and market share in the water producing industry in Ghana. A sample of 25 firms made up of 5 companies and 20 small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) was drawn from the population of water producers in the Accra-Tema industrial hub with the administration of a five-point Likert scale questionnaire based on six constructs of personal selling strategies. The strategies include adapted selling strategy, customer-oriented selling strategy, sincerity salespeople strategy, commitment salespeople strategy, liquidity salespeople strategy, and relational selling strategy. These variables were regressed over sales performance as a proxy for market share. The results indicate that all the six strategies except sincerity salespeople strategy have positive impact on sales performance suggesting that personal selling strategies can influence sales performance and hence market share in the water producing industry