| dc.description.abstract | Competitive intelligence has come up as a competitive strategy to foster survival and
growth of competing business firms. That is competitive intelligence strategy has
come up as a tactical approach that involves continuous gathering, sorting, analyzing
and distributing pertinent, timely and accurate business information for use by
business strategic decision makers. However, despite the adoption of this competitive
intelligence strategy by a number of business firms, very few studies have been done
on local airlines in Kenya and few existing studies have been done on single Airlines
shown conflicting and inconclusive results especially on one type of competitive
intelligence and firm performance. Therefore, lack adequate empirical evidence on the
relationship between competitive intelligence and firm growth motivated this study to
examine the influence of competitive intelligence strategy parameters namely,
customer intimacy intelligence, business intelligence, strategic alliance intelligence,
and operational excellence on growth of established local airlines operating in Kenya.
The study was guided by the dynamic capability theory, resource based view theory,
theory of strategic balancing and the Blue ocean model. The study adopted descriptive
survey design and use structured questionnaire to collect primary data. The study
targeted 129 managers of relevant sections in local Airlines, where Yamane’s
stratified sampling formula was used to calculate a sample size of 98 respondents who
were selected through stratified proportionate sampling technique. SPPS version 24
was used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to summarize
data using frequencies, percentages and means while Pearson correlation coefficient
and multiple regression analysis was computed to examine whether there is
correlation, linear and multiple relationship between the independent and dependent
variables. . Both descriptive and inferential statistics indicate that customer intimacy
intelligence, business intelligence, strategic alliance intelligence and operational
excellence have significant effect on growth of local airlines in Kenya. The study
concludes that one, customer intimacy intelligence is an effective strategy used to
analyze customer preferences, thus when well implemented can boost customer base
of local airlines in Kenya; two, local airlines in Kenya investing in feasible
operational excellence initiatives can save on operational costs and realize a
significant growth in their return on investments. The study recommends that one,
local Airlines in Kenya should constantly engage in customer intimacy intelligence to
gather information on dynamic customer preferences on specific airline products and
services. Secondly, local Airlines in Kenya should install secure and upgraded
business information systems to enable them relentlessly capture significant Airline
business growth information. Thirdly, local Airlines in Kenya should research and
develop viable strategic alliances that can only lead to a significant growth on their
customer base and return on assets. Fourthly, local Airlines in Kenya should develop
cost effective operational strategies meant to improve their flight operations at
minimum costs so as to minimize losses associated with high flight operational costs. | en_US |
