Adoption of market development strategy by Kenya Airways

Abstract

The study was undertaken to investigate and document the experiences of a firm at the peak of market development. This stems from the fact that there have been a number of studies done in the past and have yielded mixed results. The study took Kenya Airways as a unit of study. The research problem was therefore to answer the questions; What is the extent of market development within Kenya Airways? What factors determine market development? What is the implementation process of market development? To be able to derive this information, a case study design was used. This is because of the very probing nature of a case study that would help achieve the objectives of the study. The study results gave indications to the extent of Kenya Airways market development, the reasons for market development, the implementation of the said strategy and performance of the firm in light of this strategy. The extent of market development was looked at from the perspective of market development by breadth and mode. Market development mode established that the company largely opened up new routes in 7 countries. In Africa; Republic of South Africa, Djibouti, Mali and Senegal; in Europe, Turkey and in the Far East, Thailand and China. It was established that choice of market development is mainly due to the strategic intent of the company. In implementation, the major structures included the board, the chief executive, the commercial director and the network planning and strategy division. The process that the strategy was planned and the chronology of market development since 2003 is given. The performance indicators of the firm have been presented. These indicators include financial, internal as well as customer perspective. The indicators present an all rounded perspective on market development and why Kenya Airways may be considered successful with market development. The limitations of the study included; the company policy on information outflow, the significant use of secondary data, other factors contributing to performance other than market development and the policy of consolidating the accounts. For further research it was recommended that there should be a study on a firm that has had disastrous results with market development; a study on a number of firms in the same industry and find out their experiences with market development; a study on competitive advantage derived from market development and a study on the impact of market development on the different business units in an expanded firm.