BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY ADOPTION AND PERFORMANCE OF PENSION SCHEMES IN KENYA

Abstract

Pension schemes have had several chances emerging as a result of dynamic business atmosphere which has greatly affected their performance. As a result, the firms are exploiting adoption of various strategies such as blue ocean. This study established the link between blue ocean strategy adoption and performance of pension schemes in Kenya focusing on cost management strategy, differentiation strategy, value innovation strategy and market development strategy. The study was anchored on disruptive innovation theory, dynamic capability theory and porter competitive strategy theory and adopted a descriptive survey design. The target population for the study was 147 respondents from the 49 pension schemes in Kenya comprising of Finance, Administration and Marketing managers. As structured questionnaire was used to collect quantitative primary data which was analyzed through descriptive, correlation and regression analysis. The study results established that adoption of market development strategy such as customer profiling, pricing and competitor profiling is associated with a significant improvement in performance of the pension schemes in Kenya. It was also established that adoption of cost management strategy such as elimination of overlapping services, reduced over designing and lowering financial expenditures is associated with a significant improvement in performance of the pension schemes in Kenya. Further studies showed that adoption of differentiation strategy such as creation of new services, unique brand image and developing unique services is associated with a significant improvement in performance of the pension schemes in Kenya.  Similarly, it was indicated that adoption of value innovation strategy improving existing services, refining existing services and adoption of technologies in service provision is associated with a significant improvement in performance of the pension schemes in Kenya.  The study recommends that for the pension schemes to significantly improve their performance, they should enhance adoption of all the blue ocean strategies beyond the current level of adoption.

Key Words: Cost Management Strategy, Differentiation Strategy, Value Innovation Strategy, Market Development Strategy, Kenya