Competitive strategies and performance of firms in the mobile phone service industry in Kenya

Abstract

There is a knowledge gap with regard to the effects of the various innovation strategies pursued by organizations and the overall performance. The knowledge on how various innovation strategies affects performance of the company would be important as it would enlighten the company's management as well as other stakeholders in the industry on the approaches to take. The overall objective of this study was to determine the performance of mobile phone service providers in Kenya. Specifically the study intended to cover the following objectives; to determine the competitive strategies adopted by mobile phone service providers in Kenya and to establish the relationship between competitive strategies and performance of mobile phone service providers in Kenya. The study adopted a cross sectional survey. In this study, the populations of interest were four mobile phone service providers thus: Safaricom, Airtel, Orange Te1com and Yu. Primary data was collected using an interview guide. The open ended questions were used to collect data. Descriptive statistics was employed to analyze the data. The study found that industrial channel tend to be shorter than consumer channels because of the small number of ultimate customers, the greater geographic concentration of industrial customers and the greater complexity of the products/ customer's liaison service channels also tend to be short because of the inseparability of the production and consumption of many services. The study findings showed that pricing as an objective did have a significant influence on the performance of mobile phone service industry in Kenya. The study also recommends that mobile phone service providers should develop brand distinctiveness so as to differentiate its products from those of competitors hence strengthen customer base and loyalty. Mobile phone service providers should put additional emphasis on improving their promotional activities in order to sustain the market on the usefulness of its products and services thus making promotion an ongoing activity. This is because this study has revealed that promotion is the strongest performance tool in the product development process. Further a study should also be carried out to investigate the factors influencing competitive strategies and performance of firms operating in Kenya.