Relationship between Porter's Competitive Strategies and Performance of Value Added Services by Mobile Phone Operators in Kenya

The mobile telephony sector in Kenya has seen an unprecedented growth since its liberalization in 1998. In the wake of changing industry markets, telecom operators are looking at Mobile Value-Added Services (MVAS) such as mobile internet and money transfers to survive and succeed in the market. To survive and succeed, the firms are adopting competitive strategies to increase performance of the MVAS. The overall objective of this study was to determine the effect of competitive strategies on the performance of MVAS. Cross-sectional survey was adopted and a census study method was used since the number of firms was small. The research utilized both primary and secondary data. Questionnaires were used to collect the data. The target population of the study was the four mobile operators in Kenya. The data obtained was summarised using descriptive statistics. Pearsons correlation was used to determine the relationship between the variables, and multiple regression was used to determine the effect of the competitive strategies on the performance of MVAS. To determine whether the competitive strategies vary with the type of MVAS, t-test was used. The study concluded that the strategies adopted by the telecommunication companies had an effect on the performance of the MVAS in terms of growth of sales and market share.