Competitive Strategic Management Practices and Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises in Kenya: A Case of Mombasa County

Abstract

The competitive business environment has forced organizations to engage in complex business decisions which require competitive strategic management. According to Haines (2016), Competitive Strategic management practices involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by a company's top management on behalf of its owners, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization competes. Competitive Strategic management practice is an important practice as it gives a strong influence towards firms’ success. Due to the ever changing business environment, small and medium enterprises struggle to operate, manage and improve their businesses efficiently in order to deliver quality products and services consistently and on time. This is because in most enterprises the application of business strategies requires a host of expensive and time consuming changes both in the organizational culture and structure hence many owner / managers have had to overlook for some necessary and critical business strategies. The study will be guided by four objectives; to establish the effect of Cost leadership strategy on the performance of small and medium enterprises in Mombasa central business district, to determine the effect of Differentiation strategy on the performance of small and medium enterprises in Mombasa central business district, to establish the effect of focus strategy on the performance of small and medium enterprises in Mombasa central business district and to determine the effect of product innovation on the performance of small and medium enterprises in Mombasa central business district. The study will be anchored on three theories namely; Resource-based theory, game theory and Porter Generic Strategies Theory. The study will adopt both cross-sectional research design and descriptive survey design. This study targets 19,708 small and medium enterprises located at the Central Business District of Mombasa City County. A sample size of 202 small and medium enterprises will be selected for the study where the units of the study will be business owners/managers. Structured questionnaires will be used to collect primary data. The data collected will be analyzed using SPSS and the specific statistics will be descriptive and inferential statistics. The results will be displayed on charts, tables and graphs. Multivariate regression model and path analysis technique will be used to show the relationship between the independent variables to the dependent variable.