COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE STRATEGIES AND PERFORMANCE OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN GARRISA COUNTY, KENYA
Omar Ibrahim Koriyow - Masters of Business Administration Degree (Strategic Management), Kenyatta University, Kenya
Janesther Karugu - Department of Business Administration, Kenyatta University, Kenya
ABSTRACT
The rapidly changing business climate created by advances in technologies, economic and social changes as well as fast-shortening product life cycles, which lead to hyper-competition, demands that firms embrace competitive intelligence as a strategy. The design of competitive intelligence, as a process that monitors all elements of the external environment of an organization is still recent. Commercial banks have thus resulted in making use of various competitive intelligence aspects to ensure profitability. Despite the adoption of this competitive intelligence there is no study that has been done on the Kenyan banking industry to date. The general purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between competitive intelligence strategies and performance of the commercial banks in Garrisa County, Kenya. The study was anchored on the following objectives; to establish the effect of product intelligence, market intelligence, technology intelligence and strategic alliance on performance of Commercial Banks in Garissa County, Kenya. This research study applied the descriptive research design. Descriptive research design was chosen because it enables the researcher to generalise the findings to a larger population. The target population composed of the 191 staffs employed at the 10 commercial banks within the County. Stratified random sampling technique was used and a sample of 25% will be selected which generates a sample of 48 respondents. The study used a questionnaire administered using a drop and pick later method. Data collected was purely quantitative and it was analysed by descriptive analysis. The descriptive statistical tools such as Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS Version 21.0) were used to extract frequencies, percentages, means and other central tendencies. It was realized that majority of the commercial banks in Kenya have embraced Competitive intelligence practices and have a functional CI framework. Some of the practices include use of modern technology, total quality management for efficiency and effectiveness, competitor analysis, updated document management system and promoting efficiency and effectiveness in operations and strategizing on cost reduction and profit maximization. The CI practices help in cost saving, time saving, revenue enhancement, timely delivery of service and quality output. However, the challenges faced in its implementation, the CI function is used to monitor both internal and external business environment, analyse competition, identify economic trends, identify political and regulatory issues and assess new technology innovations. The study recommends that commercial banks should embrace competitive intelligence practices to enhance their performance in terms of revenue and profit margins coupled with customer/client base.
