Competitive business strategies adopted by mobile service providers in Kenya: a case of Telkom Kenya
Abstract
The telecommunications industry in Kenya is volatil
e and highly competitive, to survive
in the industry, organizations have to adopt busine
ss strategies that offer them
competitive advantage over their rivals. This study
looks into Telkom Kenya Ltd; one of
the four telecommunication companies in Kenya and w
ill seeks to determine the
competitive business strategies the organization ha
s adopted in order to create
competitive advantage. A case study on Telkom Kenya
Ltd was conducted with data
collected through interview. Respondents of the int
erviews were the top managers of
Telkom Kenya responsible for establishing and imple
mentation of strategy in the
organization. Data analysis involved the identifica
tion of specific wordings used by the
respondents in the interviews; these words were the
n used to make conclusions in the
study. From the study, we find that Telkom Kenya de
rives competitive advantage from
internal resources that are both tangible and intan
gible. The study also finds that
competitive strategies employed by the organization
include; Cost leadership, price
leadership and outsourcing strategies. In conclusi
on, the study recommends that Telkom
Kenya divert the reliance of tangible internal reso
urces as a source of establishing
competitive advantage as they can easily be replica
ted and substituted by competition. It
also recommends the exploration of external factors
to provide competitive advantage
and the adaptation of strategies specifically geare
d towards the increase of revenues and
market share.