Sustainable Competitive Advantage at Deacons Kenya

Abstract

Organizations being environmental dependent have to constantly adopt activities and internal configurations to reflect the new external realities since failure to do so, may put future success of the organization in jeopardy (Aosa, 1998). The study aimed at establishing how Deacons Kenya was achieving sustainable competitive advantage. To achieve this, two research objectives were used to determine the basis of achieving sustainable competitive advantage at Deacons Kenya and to analyze the factors that influence Deacon's Sustainable Competitive Advantage. The research was conducted through a case study; primary data was collected using an interview guide. The interview guide is developed in accordance with the objective. Content analysis was performed in the information obtained to study the existing information in order to determine factors that explain a certain phenomena. The study established that most of Deacons outlets are positioned in strategic locations, their shops are very spacious and clothes and a variety of other items are excellently displayed. The findings also revealed that when focusing on market, they begin by selecting a market niche where buyers have distinctive preferences. Deacons Kenya Limited has adopted a low cost leader's basis for competitive advantage in order to lower overall costs than competitors. The study concludes that that pricing strategy was used to a great extent adopting a cost conscious organizational culture, intolerance of waste, intensive screening of budgets and broad employee participation in cost control efforts. The study also concludes that differentiation strategy approach was used to focus on developing a reputation for superior quality products. From the findings and conclusions, the study recommends that in order to keep up with competition, firms must constantly search for a competitive strategy that will ensure competitive advantage in the long term and yield market leadership and that the management should engage various strategies to survive in a dynamic and highly competitive business environment. The research study was faced by resistance from target respondents fearing that the information requested would be used for other purposes apart from academic purposes The study recommends that further research should be done on other organizations in the public sector so as to get comprehensive information on how the other players in the sector have responded towards competition in their quest to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.