THE EFFECTS OF PROMOTIONAL MIX ON BRAND LOYALTY: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE BREWERY INDUSTRY IN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

In the modern marketing, promotion is the most familiar strategy used by the various business organizations to fascinate the customer. Nowadays the Ethiopian beer industry is composed of recently privatized breweries are in stiff competition against each other to dominate the market. However, resource allocation based on identification of which promotional mix has the critical influence on the overall brand loyalty has still been overlooked. Promotional mix is a critical approach to enhance the brand loyalty as companies try to do some more attractive, influencing promotion through various media. The prime motive of the study is evaluating the promotional mix to consumer based brand loyalty of the Ethiopian beer industry. The study adopted both descriptive and explanatory research methods. A total of 315 sample respondents participated in this study was selected from 5 hotels and 18 bar & Restaurants in three sub-cities namely Arada, Bole and Kirkos by stratified random sampling method. Primary data were collected using selfadministered questionnaires and the data were analyzed using Statistical computer software SPSS and MS Excel. The result endorses that promotional mix component such as advertising, sales promotion and personal selling have significant effect on brand loyalty but direct marketing and public relations were found to be insignificant to enhance the brand loyalty. The integrated promotional mix can contribute higher influence of promoting the brand value of respective breweries. Thus, they should integrate advertising message with direct marketing and public relations in order to enhance the effect of promotional mix on overall brand loyalty.