Merchandizing Practices And Sales Performance Of Supermarkets In Nakuru County, Kenya

ABSTRACT In Kenya, the challenges of sales performance are prevalent amongst the supermarkets. A declining sales performance was noted for Uchumi supermarket in its 2016 financial year leading to its poor financial performance. Nakumatt supermarket has also had poor sales performance in the recent years leading to its struggling financial position. Merchandizing is one of the aspects that can be utilized for the purposes of improving on sales performance. The study’s purpose is to determine the effect of merchandizing practices andNakuru county supermarkets’ sales performance. The researchsought to dissect the diverse aspects of merchandizing on sales performance and try to establish why the supermarkets are making losses and not profits on sales. The study specifically seek to determine customer attraction, product differentiation, product access and staff attributes effect on Nakuru town Supermarkets’ sales performance. This research used The Product Marketing Mix Theory, Customer Behaviour Theory and Impulse Buying Behaviour Theory. The researchutilized descriptive research design to guide on data collection, analysis and presentation of findings. To obtain its data, the study will target the eight main supermarkets in Nakuru Town. The target population for the study was 590 staff comprising of management and supermarket line attendants.Nassiuma formula was used to determine the desired sample size for the study. 86 respondents was selected as the sample size. Supermarket line attendants study sample was selected using stratified sampling. This study used structured questionnaires to obtain its data from supermarket line attendants.Apilot study was carried out to test the research questionnaires’ reliability and validity.In ascertain the research questionnaires’ validity, content validity was used and cronbach alpha test was used to test the reliability of the questionnaires.Quantitative data was analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The entire study used tables to present the findings. The study found that customer attraction, product differentiation, product access and staff attributes had a positive and significant influence on sales performance.The study concludes that increasing customer attraction helps boost profits simply because loyal customers already have trust in organization’s brand and therefore are likely to spend more. The supermarkets uses product differentiation to distinguish a product from similar offerings on the market and gives customers plenty of choice in selecting a product, and encourages creativity. Product access enables supermarkets to sell goods and services across borders. Staff attributes helps to develop the prevailing workplace environment that determines employee morale, productivity and team building abilities.The study recommended that supermarkets should identify their ideal new clients, use direct response marketing to attract customers, give something away to entice new customers, give a themselves a face lift to increase sales. Supermarkets to offer products with unique designs as well as selling product brands that are of higher quality compared to its substitutes. Supermarket to be located near other supermarkets that offer similar commodities so that it improves on product access.Supermarkets to increase the number sales staff. This is because the study established that this aspect of staff attributes was rated lowest. In policy making aimed at improving the sales volumes.