E-commerce and Sustainable Competitive Advantage of Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies in Nairobi City County

Abstract

The evolution of information technology has had a significant effect on business operations and this has changed market structures and the degree of competition. Businesses are able to connect faster at a lower cost both internally as well as externally, in a local scale as well as globally. The adoption of information communication technology has also led to enhanced business operations, by increasing efficiency as well as productivity thus creating a competitive advantage for organizations. The Sacco sector makes significant contribution to development of the country’s economy. It is among the active sectors whose competition status is ever increasing as the number of registered Saccos continue to increase. As a result the organizations are forced to find ways to improve how they serve their members. Adoption of ecommerce has been cited to be one of the things that Saccos can invest in to enable them improve their service delivery. The focus of this study was E-Commerce and sustainable competitive advantage of SACCOs in Nairobi City County. The research objective was to determine ways in which ECommerce contributes to sustainable competitive advantage of SACCOs in Nairobi City County. The two theories that informed this research include the resource based view and the transaction cost theory. The study utilized cross sectional survey as the research design of choice and used primary data that was collected by distributing questionnaires to the respondents. Data analysis was undertaken quantitatively using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The research showed that parameters of Ecommerce had a significant relationship with sustainable competitive advantage of Saccos whereby the coefficients recorded included 0.067 for strategy alignment, 0.121 for inter organizational linkages, 0.178 for business process integration and 0.153 for organizational agility. The study concluded that E-commerce contributed to the sustainable competitive advantage for Saccos. The researcher recommended that more training should be conducted with regards to E-Commerce as well as enhancing the budget towards acquisition and maintenance of the system. The researcher also gave suggestions for further studies in the area of implementation strategies for E-Commerce as well as conducting similar study in a different context for comparability purposes.