| dc.description.abstract | The business environment has changed dramatically within the last decade. Globalization
and market liberalization has altered the way firms compete within and interact both with
its customers and suppliers. In response to the progressively dynamic developments and
turbulent business environments, business executives are increasingly being confronted
by the necessity to attain the organizational capabilities for continuous innovation by
looking at various strategic options. Companies have invested considerable time and
effort in developing value added services (VASs) that work and often consider adopting
innovative management tools to address the challenge of improving service quality,
increasing productivity and competitive advantage. One modern management tool
adopted by a few service-oriented companies is value addition. Value addition can be
based on its impact into those sustaining the current competitive marketplace by
enhancing existing products or services valued by customers and those that disrupt the
marketplace by fundamentally altering ways customers think about product or service
performance.
Telecom providers invest in these strategic initiatives to be able to cross-sell additional
mobile services and enlarge their share-of-wallet with the consumer. This way, the
provider does not only get more revenue from its customers, but also creates a better
‘lock-in’. However, notwithstanding the empirical discussion in the literature in respect
of VASs strategies, there is both a theoretical and an empirical gap for a more in-depth
understanding of the way user value is created in mobile commerce services for strategic
purposes. The present study seeks to enrich the discussion on adoption of VAS as a
strategic management tool and contribute to the existing literature on their associations.The study is specific to Safaricom Ltd, a local telecommunications company and the most
successful company by financial performance. Through descriptive tools, the results of
this study will be of great relevance to organizations facing strategic management
challenges, as well as to the academic circles. | en |
