| dc.description.abstract | According to World Bank 2015 report, banking industry contributes enormously to
socioeconomicdevelopments of regions and countries. Banks employ, finance and contribute
to GDP. However, Economic Survey 2015 reports customer satisfaction problem among
commercial banks in Kisumu County. The global crisis experienced affects the banking
industry in Kisumu, more so the mobilization of deposits and trade reduction coupled with
increased interest margins. Banks are forced to adapt to effective personal selling strategies to
promote their products/services beyond boarder's thus creating awareness and growth of their
marketing share. Effective personal selling strategies may enable banks to attract and retain
customers thus increased volume of sales, sales revenue and distribution outlets. Kenya can
attempt to solve these problems focused on regulations as manifested in the Banking Act that
allowed banks to outsource services and engage in aggressive personal selling. Prior studies
have failed to address effectiveness of personal selling, factors that contribute to effectiveness
and its challenges thereof in the banking industry, particularly in Kisumu County Kenya
leading to implementation. Therefore, this study sought to establish effectiveness of personal
selling strategies in the banking industry in Kisumu County, Kenya. Specific objectives were
to: establish extent of adoption of personal selling strategies; describe factors contributing to
effectiveness of personal selling strategies; and examine extent of personal selling challenges
among these banks. AIDAS Theory of Personal Selling guided the study using a descriptive
survey research design. Target population comprised of 102 branch managers, customer
relationship managers and sales managers of 34 bank branches in Kisumu County. Primary
data was collected through a structured questionnaire while secondary data through
banking/government documents analysis. A pilot of 10 respondents was used to test
reliability using Cronbach's Alpha at 0.7 threshold and validity through literature search and
expert review which was achieved (alpha=0.83) for all the instruments. Each objective was
analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, means, percentages, variance,
standard deviation and cross tabulation and presented in tables. An overall mean =2.96,
SD=0.62) for the extent of adoption of personal selling strategies was achieved implying that
adoption of personal selling strategies was done to a large extent. The study also revealed that
bank policies and regulation had an effect on personal selling (mean=l.l I, SD=l.l1), sales
.teams who use persuasion selling strategy had efficient communication skills (mean=4.28,
SD=.93) and finally customer sales and preferences (mean=3.94, SD=1.05). Finally, the study
found that changing nature of personal selling such as high technology involvement was
perceived as a challenge to a very large extent with a (mean=4.04, SD=l.l1), handling of
informed customer and uninformed customers (mean=3.16, SD=1.35), and (mean=3.20,
SD=1.34) respectively. The study established that there was a small extent of adoption of
personal selling strategies, the mentioned factors have a large extent of influence on personal
selling strategies and the main challenges were technological changes on uninformed persons.
Training of sales team was recommended in order to increase adoption of personal selling
strategies, improvement on bank policies and regulations and finally enhancing
accommodation of elderly and disabled people during use of personal selling strategies.
Findings may be useful to bank managers, marketers, financial policymakers and the
academia. | en_US |
