FACTORS AFFECTING MARKET SHARE OF PACKED WATER IN ETHIOPIA: THE CASE OF ORIGIN NATURAL MINERAL WATER

Abstract

The expansion of bottling firms and marketing opportunity of bottled water are clear indicators to represent Ethiopia as a home of suitable investment opportunity for bottled water sector. The objective of this study is to examine the factors affecting market share of Origin Natural Mineral Water. Explanatory research design and mixed research approach is applied. The target population includes consumers of Origin Mineral Water under Addis Ababa City. In this study sample size consisted of 333 customers and three distributers or wholesaler. Sampling is done by convenience techniques. The study was used both questionnaire and interview data collection instruments. Spearman measure of strength of association correlation analysis is applied to measure the strength and association between dependent variable, market share and four independent variables; product strategy, price strategy, promotion strategy and distribution strategy. To measure the factors influencing market share of Origin Natural Mineral Water and examine the effect of the independent variables on market share Binary regression model was used. Hence, the goodness of fit of the model is 66% indicated that the independent variables had a significant power to explain the variance in market share. After confirming the model was valid the regression analysis and hypothesis testing is performed using SPSS software. The result showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between market share of Origin Natural Mineral Water and product strategy, price strategy, promotion strategy and distribution strategy. Finally, the study recommended that appropriate and adequate measures of marketing mix strategies leads to long term business successes, holding remarkable market share.