Competitive Strategies and Performance of Deposit Taking Savings and Credit Cooperatives in Meru County Kenya
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Date
2023-11
Authors
Kathimuuri, Ruth
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kenyatta University
Abstract
Savings and credit cooperatives help in mobilising of member savings and provision of credit facilities. Based on world council of credit unions report of 2017, there are about 1.2 billion members being served by the 300 million Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies worldwide. Kenya Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies mobilise around 400 billion making it a large savings contributor to the economy. Reduced customer retention, low customer loyalty and reduced sales volume has to be dealt with by the management as these have led to the deposit taking savings and credit cooperatives poor performance in Meru County, Kenya. Competitive strategies are useful in enabling the Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies to perform. This survey attempts to determine how competitive strategies affect the performance of Meru County's savings and credit cooperative societies in Kenya. The inquiry was constructed around Michael Porter's generic strategies theory, evolutionary theory, resource-based view model and balanced scorecard hypothesis. The investigation's particularly is to ascertain how cost leadership, differentiation, focus, and innovation strategies affect deposit-taking savings and credit cooperatives' performance in Meru County, Kenya. Customer retention, customer loyalty and sales volume was utilized as the preferred metrics for performance. Descriptive research design was applied where a census of 14 Meru County’s deposit taking savings and credit cooperatives in Kenya and 308 respondents was used. The employment of random stratified sampling was applied to select board of directors, senior management, middle level management, and other employees. A sample of 92 respondents was selected using 30% of the target population. Primary data was gathered using both closed and open-ended questionnaires. The instruments were examined for reliability using test-retest method and expert opinion while. An expert's opinion was used to evaluate the content validity. To analyze the data, both descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential (correlation and regression) statistics were applied. The study is relevant to investors who want to invest in savings and credit cooperative societies, management in making informed decisions, scholars whereby it formed basis for further research and policy makers in coming up with policies that enhance savings and credit cooperative performance. The discoveries of the investigation demonstrated that cost leadership strategy positively affected performance significantly; differentiation strategy significantly affected performance positively; focus strategy affected performance positively in an insignificantly; while innovation strategy negatively affected savings and credit cooperative performance insignificantly in Meru County, Kenya. The research suggests that the cost leadership strategy be increased in order to boost the savings and credit cooperative societies’ performance in Meru County, Kenya. Therefore, the management of the savings and credit cooperative societies should endeavor to increase the amount of resources channeled into the training of leaders to optimize their managerial potential for optimum growth of the savings and credit cooperative societies.
Description
A Research Project Submitted to the School of Business, Economics and Tourism in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of A Degree in Master of Business Administration (Strategic Management) of Kenyatta University, November 2023.
Keywords
Competitive Strategies, Deposit Taking Savings and Credit Cooperatives, Meru County, Kenya