ABSTRACT

This research work dwell on the effectiveness of personal selling strategies in marketing of table water and juice drinks in Aba metropolis, Abia State, Nigeria. The statement of problem of this study are that many companies of table water and juice drink industries do not embark on a visible feasibility study of their promotional tools, most firnis fail to educate their sales personnel on the mechanism of the product as they may be challenged by either prospective customer or customer who may need an instantaneous answer and vesting sales persons with responsibility of driving and other functions. The broad objective of the study is the effectiveness of personal selling strategy in marketing of table water and juice drink in Aba metropolis Abia State Nigeria, the specific objective are to (i) examine the feature marketers (ii) ascertain the extent of adoption of personal selling practices another market strategy by the marketers. This studies analyze the features of the marketers in the study area with descriptive analytical tools such as frequency and percentages. It was discovered that male are more into the business than female with relatively high academic qualifications and moderately experienced with their major sources of income being personal savings and cooperative societies Descriptive method was also used in the analysis of this hypotheses as it discovered that most of the table water and juice drink marketers adopted supplying directly to the customers ahead of other methods. Determining factors that affect personal selling was another area the work explores. It does so by using regression analysis .where it discovered that cost of personal selling, education, years of experience and number of sales persons affect personal selling strategy which was measured by number of new customers gotten in a given period. Analyzing the performance of personal selling strategy among table water and juice marketers used multiple regression analysis. In the study it shows that cost of personal selling, education, age of workers, cost of advertising, marketing cost and price are the factors that affect the performance of the table water and juice drink marketers which was measured by sales volume of the marketer. It recommended that juice drink and table water industries should go for capacity building training to enhance their performance.