Relationship Marketing and Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Large Pre-hospital Service Companies in Kenya
Abstract
Relationship marketing includes key principles ranging from obtaining data on customers
to analyzing the gathered data and personalizing the relationship between an organization
and its customers through enhanced marketing strategies. For a firm to sustain its
competitiveness for a period of time, it should ensure that its strategies are not easily
duplicable to its competitors. Relationship marketing can therefore be used as an agent of
achieving sustainable competitive advantage. This study sought to establish the effect of
relationship marketing and sustainable competitive advantage in large pre-hospital
service companies in Kenya. The variables of the study included use of technology,
customer acquisition, brand strategy and customer trust. To achieve its objective, the
study used questionnaires. The 30 targeted respondents included employees from the
sales and marketing departments of the 7 largest pre hospital services companies in
Kenya that include EPLUS Limited, AAR Health services, AMREF Flying doctors,
Nairobi hospital, Medics 24, St. John‟s Ambulance and Swift Medics companies.
Censoring method was used to obtain 14 respondents. The study absorbed a descriptive
research design. The study collected both quantitative and qualitative data and analyzed it
through SPSS and content analysis respectively. The findings were presented using
frequency tables. The study found out that relationship marketing strategies that are well
stipulated greatly influence in success achieving and sustaining competitive advantage
within pre hospital industry. The findings revealed that use of technology facilitates the
organizations in achieving competitive advantage through enhancing organizational
processes and understanding customer behaviour. This is however limited by the high
costs involved in technological integration. The companies are also keen on acquiring
customers and more resources are used to acquire new ones than maintain the existing
relationships. The study also established that the companies use brand and customer trust
strategies to gain competiveness. The customer trust strategies used by the organizations
include enhancing deliverables, upgrade customer interaction systems and process and
stabilizing the products and services. The study therefore concluded that customer
acquisition, brand strategy, use of technology and customer trust affect sustainable
competitive advantage and recommends that they should be keenly considered when
developing relationship marketing strategies.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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