Market Entry Strategies and Performance of Commercial Banks in Kenya

Abstract

The study aim was to find out how market entry strategies affect firm performance with specific focus on commercial banks in Kenya. The market entry approaches analysed included licensing strategy, partnership, business alliance and FDI an how they impacted on the firm performance. The study was anchored agency theory, tractional cost theory and balanced scored card model. The study adopted a descriptive research design and the population of the study include employees working at equity bank. The study specific focus was on 394 management staff working for equity bank in their various branched distributed around Nairobi County. The study used a sample of 119 which was selected using stratified sampling technique. Data used in this study was both primary and secondary data collected using a semi-structured questionnaire while the secondary data was collected from financial reports. The data collected was analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The descriptive statistics include means, standard deviation, percentage and frequencies while correlation and regression analysis were the inferential statistics used in this study. The study finding revealed that market entry approaches significantly increased performance of commercial banks. The study showed that licensing, partnership, business alliance and foreign direct investment had a significant positive effect on performance of Equity bank in Kenya. The study concludes that commercial banks seeking to internationalize must adopt these market entry approaches to guarantee high performance. Th study further recommends that management of commercial banks should venture into international market by adoption market entre strategies such licensing, partnership, business alliance and foreign direct investment to increase their market coverage. In policy making, the study recommended that industry regulators should formulate polices that will enable local companies to adopt business internationalization as one of the approaches to diversify their income streams.