ABSTRACT

Marketing communication is a systematic relationship between a business and its market in which the marketer assembles a wide variety of ideas, designs, messages, media, shapes, forms and colours, both to communicate ideas and to stimulate a perception of products and services by individual people who have been _aggregated into a target market. Marketing communications are integrated so that a single message is conveyed by all marketing communications tools. There has been a tremendous growth of private middle level colleges in Kenya in the past two decades. The growth is as a result of increasing demand for tertiary education by those graduating from secondary schools and lack of enough space in · the public universities. The Private middle level colleges bridge the gap between supply and demand of higher education in Kenya, which is caused by inability of the public institutions to meet the demand. The demand for tertiary education has led to establishment of many Private middle level colleges, especially in major towns and cities. This has led to stiff competition among them together with the public ones. The competition has made it necessary for them to apply the various marketing communication tools to market their programs and increase their enrollment number. The study aims at broadt?ning understanding about the effect of the use of marketing communication tools in private middle level colleges in Mombasa. It also aims at shedding light on the best way of using and integrating the marketing communication tools so as to increase the enrollment of the student in those colleges. The colleges are stratified according to the nature of examination offered and has been carried out to twenty middle level colleges in Mombasa. Data for the study consist of primary data collected by use of questionnaires and secondary data based on the colleges' brochures, course lists, reports and other written material. The data is analyzed using means standard deviation and variances. Descriptive statistics such as frequency table, proportions and percentages are also used. Findings is presented in form of tables, charts and figures. The findings showed that the middle level colleges in Mombasa have great extent usage of personal selling, direct marketing and advertising but have moderate extent usage of brands and branding and sponsorship. The use of outdoor adverts (posters, transport etc), corporate literature ( e,g magazines, brochures, reports) and new media (internet websites & search engines, mobile phones) were most popular amongst the colleges studied. However there was little extent in usage of vouchers & coupons and corporate social responsibility. Due to the increased competition in the sector most colleges were aiming at increasing their popularity through advertising to have more student enrollment and therefore gain a competitive edge.