Marketing practices in private primary schools in Kenya: a case study of Maragua district

Abstract

Private sector in education is' increasingly being admired by the public relatively due to the quality of education offered as compared to the public sector. This is more so especially on introduction of free primary education by the NARC Government in year 2003. The sudden increase in number of pupils in respect to facilities including human resource caused the drop in the education quality (MOEST annual report 2004). The result of this has been upcoming investors in the private primary schools. At the same time parents are willing to take their children to these schools where the quality of education is high. This has resulted to the need for investors to market their schools for customer awareness and right decision as to which school to take the children. The study aimed at surveying the marketing practices applied in private primary schools in Maragua District in Central province of Kenya. The literature review was based on 4 Ps of marketing namely, product/service, price, promotion and place with an addition of physical evidence, people and marketing research. !i The study design adopted was descriptive as will provided numeric measurable data. The target population was sixteen schools, a random sample of 30% of the fifty two schools where in each school, one respondent i.e. the manager was issued with a questionnaire. The research instrument was a questionnaire and the data analysis took the resultant form of pie chart, tables and frequencies.