A survey of strategic choices made by Publishing firms in Kenya

Abstract

Publishing firms just like other business organizations must build defenses against competitive forces and position themselves strategically in the environment. The publishing industry like any other industry faces competitive forces such as threat of new entrants to the market, rivalry among competitors, presence of substitutes, bargaining power of suppliers, and technology sophistication. Organizations must therefore make strategic decisions that will not only cushion them against unforeseen circumstances but which will also create sustainable competitive advantage for the organization to thrive. The Research project was carried out through a census survey and targeted about 120 publishing firms in Kenya as recorded by Kenya Business Directory and appearing as registered members 0 f the Kenya Publishers A ssociation. It so ught to establish strategic choices made by publishing firms in Kenya in a changing environment and determine the factors, which influence those strategic choices. '.. Primary data was collected via questionnaires with both closed and open-ended questions. 51 firms responded out of78 giving a response rate of65%. The study revealed that most companies were locally owned at 64 %, foreign owned at 18%, and both locally and foreign owned at 18%. It further revealed that textbook publishing is the most preferred area of publishing with a proportion of23.8%, it was closely followed by professional book publishing with a proportion of 20.3 %, newspaper publishing 14.3%, novels and fiction 11.9%, religious books 10.7%,joumals and magazines 10.7% in that order. The least preferred area of Xl publishing is the publishing of technical books with a proportion of8.3%.It is evident that textbook publishing is the most profitable area of publishing. It is evident from the findings of the study that mark et penetra tion stra tegy was established as the most preferred stra tegic choice amongst the publishers indicating a mean score of 4.3878, which implies a preference of a very large extent. Differentiation strategy ranked second with a mean score of 4.3306, implying a very large extent of preference. Other strategic choices in this category include market development strategy and focus strategy. The following factors highly influenced selection of strategy choices, essence of competitive advantage, current strategy, market tastes and preferences, technological advancement, competitive forces and government policies and decisions. These factors demonstra ted a very large extent of influence on selection of stra tegic choices by the publishing firms.