Relationship marketing strategy as a competitive advantage in the mobile telephony industry in Kenya

Abstract

The way of doing business has changed rapidly in the Kenyan business environment and world all over. Competition has become so stiff for a business without appropriate strategies cannot survive. Much of the cut-throat competition is being experienced in the service sector. One of the rapid growths in Kenya has been experience in the mobile telephony industry. Price wars and confrontational marketing strategies has been the rule of the day in the industry. However, a shift in marketing strategies has been noted to have taken place in many service providing firms whereby organizations are shifting from transactional marketing strategies to relationship marketing strategies in order to retain and maintain their customers. It is from the view that this study was carried out with an objective of establishing the relationship marketing strategies that mobile telephony companies are currently employing in gaining competitive advantage. All the mobile service providing firms were targeted for the study. However, only 75% of the targeted firms participated in the study. The percentage was found to be suitable for the researcher to make conclusions from the findings of the study. A number of statistical tools were used to collect the data an analyze it. A structured questionnaire was used and administered through “drop and pick technique”. Tables, parentage, mean scores, frequencies and standard deviations were used to analyze the data and present the same. In general, the firms were found to be employing several relationship marketing strategies in a bid to gain competitive advantage. Most of the strategies found to be currently employed by the firms were customer focused. Though the extent to which the strategies were being employed by the firms was examined, it was evident that the variation were too minimal and therefore they can be said to be employing several relationship marketing strategies in a bid to gain competitive advantage and survive in the market place. Understanding the customer preferences and providing value to the customer is inevitable in this day and age of increased competitiveness. The firms should therefore prioritize and re-focus their efforts in building and maintaining strong relationships with their customers. Further, it is fair enough for the Government through the Communication commission of Kenya come up with a policy to govern the firm’s practices.