Strategic Responses of Saccos to Changing Competitive Business Environment: a Study of Kussco Affiliated Saccos in Nairobi County

Abstract

A company has competitive advantage whenever it has an edge over its rivals in securing customers and defending against competitive forces. Strategy is therefore fundamental in the planning process since strategic decisions influence the way organization respond to their environment. This study sought to determine the strategic responses adopted by SACCOS in Kenya.

The study objectives were to establish the strategic responses adopted by SACCOs in response to changing competitive business environment to establish the challenges facing SACCOs in the implementation of the strategies and a supplementary aim of determining if SACCOs have control and feedback system to assess the effectiveness of the implementation of response strategies in competitive business environment of business.

This study adopted a descriptive survey design. The target population comprised of all the 1,000 registered SACCOs in Nairobi County Kenya a sample size of 100 of registered SACCOs was used for this study. The study colleeted both primary and secondary data. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for analysis of data and for descriptive analysis, percentages and frequency distributions were used.

The findings indicate that the majority of the SACCOs were well established in Kenya and evaluated various strategies that were applied by the SACCOs. The findings indicated that communication strategies have a role to play in enhancing the competitive strategy implementation in the SACCOs. From the findings competition was rated the most serious challenge facing SACCOs in Kenya followed by challenges from the legal and regnlatory environment.

The study concluded that response strategies used in the SACCO indUstry are important in helping an organisation improve their performance and competitive edge. This study recommended that SACCOs should develop and improve on strategy support systems that are crucial and are the many routine activities that are performed in a company to keep it running smoothly.