Factors Affecting Mobile Money Transfer Services in Kenya: a Case of M-pesa Users at Kasarani Division in Nairobi

Abstract

The organizations offering mobile phone money transfers services, both private and public, in today's dynamic market place are increasingly leaving antiquated marketing philosophies, policies and strategies to the adoption of more customer-driven initiatives that seek to understand, attract and build intimate long term relationship with profitable customers. The growing interest in strategic customer relationship management initiatives that aim at ensuring customer perception, identification, interaction, customization and personalization that unreservedly lead to customer satisfaction, retention and ultimate profitability are becoming interesting areas of study for the scholars and researchers worldwide. The rapid growth in the mobile money transfers services in Kenya brought about by the M-Pesa product of Safaricom is attributed to strategic innovation that was aimed at the creation of growth strategies, new product categories, services or business models that change the game of doing business and generate significant new values for consumers and the owners of the strategy; corporation or the firm initiating the strategic process. Strategic innovation process takes a road-less traveled -It challenges an organization to look beyond its established business boundaries and mental models and participate in an open-minded, creative, exploration of the realm of possibilities that can bring a real change in quest for solutions to customers. What researchers are asking is whether there were no customer related challenges to this M-Pesa product. Customer is the prime focus of any business. The overall goals of most organizations are finding, attracting and winning new customers, nurturing and retaining existing customers, enticing former customers back into the fold and reducing the costs of marketing and customer service. Though customer perception is a subjective component of consumer satisfaction, it is very critical for any business to understand how customers perceive the products it offers. There are a number of factors that affect mobile money transfer services in Kenya; product quality, affordability, convenience and accessibility. This study was aimed at analyzing the factors affecting mobile money transfer services with a real focus on M-PESA product. The study was motivated by rapid growth of the MPESA product and need to adopt and apply similar strategies in development of other products in the market. A case study design was used in the study, where selfadministered questionnaires and research guide were used to collect data from M-Pesa customers at Kasarani Division and then the data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistical techniques and content analysis were also used to analyze the collected data and presented the data in terms of frequency tables, pie charts, column charts and percentages in order to meet the research objectives. The study established that product quality, affordability, convenience and accessibility were the main factors affecting mobile money transfers services. The study recommends improvement of product quality, affordability and accessibility as a way of improving the delivery of the mobile money transfer services in Kenya.