Codes of Conduct and Marketing Strategies in Kenya’s Horticultural Sector

Abstract

The global demand for product quality and safety in Western European markets has motivated rapid growth of production and marketing codes of conduct between business partners. However, though the Kenya Horticultural Crops Development Authority’s code of conduct on contractual guidelines has promoted business to farm business (B2B) relationships between exporters and smallholders, the relationships have received little empirical analysis. This paper uses case analysis based on strategic marketing framework to examine the B2B’s purpose, target and competitive, growth, promotion, distribution, and pricing strategies. The analysis reveals that the B2B strategies are based on supply chain governance constructs: written and verbal contracts. The purpose of the contracts is to manage procurement of high quality and safe produce which in itself is contingent on the European Union market served. On targets, written contracts seem efficient with organized producers and verbal contracts with independent producers. As competitive edges, written contracts are orientated toward differentiation strategy and verbal contracts, low-cost strategy. Growth in written contracts is through market penetration and diversification in verbal contracts. However, sharp differences exist on distributional, promotional and pricing strategies.

Keywords: code of conduct, contracts, marketing strategies, horticulture, Kenya