Publishers' promotional response to liberalization of book market in Kenya

Abstract

The government in 1998 liberalized the book market in Kenya. This liberalization brought about very stiff competition among the publishers of different categories in that it allowed all of them to compete on equal footing for the same market. Publishers responded to this liberalization by using promotion among other responses. However, prior to the study, how publishers used promotion to respond to the liberalization was not clear, neither was it clear how these promotional responses difiered amongst the different categories of publishers. The study evaluated the effectiveness of the promotional mix publishers of different categories used in response to the liberalization of the book market. The researcher used both quantitative and qualitative data collected from both primary and secondary sources. For primary data, a questionnaire was designed for the relevant employees, while for secondary sources; data was collected from institutional records, govemment reports, relevant documents, books and journals. A total of 31 respondents (one fiom each of the 31 registered publishers) were interviewed. Data was analyzed and results presented in frequencies and percentages in form of tables and graphs. The hypotheses were tested using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) at 5% level of significance