Marketing Strategies of Commercial Fish Farming under Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) in Kenya: An Empirical Study of Kitui County
Michael Kasamba Mutambuki, Bula Hannah Orwa PhD

Abstract
Fish farming continues to be the fast growing animal production industry and this rate of expansion must continue if aquaculture was to satisfy global demand for fish products. Kitui County which is largely arid and semi-arid land has not been left out in ensuring that fish farming develops to bridge the gap as a source of the alternative livelihood to the local community. The main objective of the research study was to determine marketing strategies of commercial fish farming in Kitui County. The study specifically aimed at; determining the effect of product branding on marketing of commercial fish farming, assessing the effect of sales promotion as a market strategy of fish products under ESP; establish the effect of market positioning in commercial fish farming under ESP and find out the core effect of competences in marketing. The study population comprised of a total of 667 fish farmers selected across eight constituencies of Kitui County. The study adopted a simple random sampling technique to select a sample size of 200 respondents. Questionnaires were used as the major data collection instruments and administered to the respondents. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The results were presented using charts and tables. The results from the study have clearly indicated that the product branding, sales promotion, market positioning and core competences marketing strategies affect commercial fish farming under economic stimulus. These four factors had different indices of determinacy with branding of fish products being main influencing factor closely followed by core competences. Sales promotion and the market positioning were found to be also important in determining commercial fish farming. Most of commercialized fish farmers would not easily sell their produce due to poor mechanisms of marketing. These can be associated to lack of enough branding of fish products and fish farmers low competences. This study found the need for comparative commercial fish farming marketing studies in other counties to reach elaborative findings for this industry.

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