Promotion strategies and the performance of small and medium enterprises in Uganda

Abstract

This research was an attempt to study promotion strategies and the performance of small and medium enterprise, but focusing mainly on hotel businesses in Hoima Municiparity and the results came out, that Promotion strategies such as advertising, sales promotion and personal selling are crucial in the small and medium enterprises, specifically hotels. They play a big role in informing, reminding and persuading of potential customers in the market. The study sought to establish the effect of advertising on the performance of hotel businesses, to assess the influence of sales promotion on the performance of hotel businesses, and to assess the influence of personal selling on the performance of hotel businesses. Random sampling methods were used to collect the data. A sample of sixty (60) employee and employers from selected hotels that is to say, Kontiki hotel, Resort hotel, Crown hotel, Glory Summit hotel, Koloping hotel and Kijugu Hill hotel, were given questionnaire to fill in, and fifty (50) respondents were able to return back the questionnaire well filled. The results from the data collected were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results showed that hotel businesses uses advertising, sales promotion and personal selling as forms of promotion strategies to improve their performances in terms of sales growth, profits and market share. The results also indicated that promotion strategies that is to say advertising persuades large numbers of customers to buy products and services, hence more sales and bigger market share are obtained, sales promotion using incentives encourages more customers to buy more products and services, hence sales growth and increased profits are attained and personal selling informs and persuaded more customers to buy products and services, this leads to increased market share and more sales thus increased profits are attained by these hotels. The study recommended that hotel businesses in Hoima Municipality should take note on selecting the effective form of promotion. Marketer in these hotels should consider the objective of the business before applying these promotion strategies so as to be able to improve the performance of the business