Blue ocean strategy on sustainable competitive advantage at Coca Cola Kenya Limited

Abstract

Strategic thinking has been pre-occupied with competition, competitive strategy, competitive benchmarking, competitive advantage, outperforming competition. By doing so, most businesses simply extend what their competitors are doing by trying to outdo them by doing what their competitors are doing better which regresses their strategic thinking towards the competition. Thus rather than focus on beating the competition, the strategy of blue ocean ensures that the firm innovates itself to come up with a new market that has no competition allowing it to break free from the highly competitive market and achieve a competitive advantage that is sustainable. The objective of this study was to determine how the choice of blue ocean strategy affects sustainable competitive advantage of Coca Cola Kenya Limited. This research used a case study research design. The study employed face to face interview as a primary data collection method. The researcher used the interview guide to gather information from the selected top management staff of Coca Cola Kenya. The interview guide had open-ended questions. The study targeted sixteen respondents from Coca Cola Kenya. The researcher used a Likert scale questionnaire for collection of data. To supplement secondary data obtained from other sources was used. The data recorded during the interview was reconstructed. The data analysis procedure included cleaning of the data and also checking for errors and omissions. Analysis of the secondary data was done qualitatively. The responses from the interview were reported by descriptive narrative arising from content analysis. The data was analysed using content analysis. In testing the importance of the model, the coefficient of determination (R2) was applied to measure the degree to which the variation in sustainable competitive advantage is explained by the variations in blue ocean strategies. The study found that the Company by the help of managers applies four steps in order to come up with effective marketing strategies: gathering facts; developing goals or objectives and measures to be pursued; develop strategies by having tactical plans and by performance management use of PDR through the Human resource. The study also established that product proper route coverage (distribution), innovations uniqueness, affordable pricing and promotion leads to an increase in product awareness, increased sales thus increased profitability. The study recommends that the management of Coca Cola Company should diversify their products and introduce healthy drinks due to the change in customer preference which is healthy drinks. Because of competition the company faces the study recommends that Coca Cola Company should try venturing into new markets that’s venturing into new product line and also come up with new ways of differentiating their products in terms of age, taste preferences and production of noncarbonated products for the health conscious individual to attract more customers. The management of Coca Cola Company needs to hire professionals who can come up with effective marketing strategies these will ensure that they increase their sales thus profitability.