ABSTRACT

The main aim of this research was to analyze the effects of value chain on organization competitive advantage with focus to insurance industry in Kenya. An analysis of value chain is helpful to a firm in the identification of bottlenecks. For easy survival in the market, companies have to have a competitive advantage over others. Like any othe service industry, insurance industry operates in a lean, crowded and extremely competitive industry. The treat of the new entrants is not only high but inevitable, the product offered in the market are not differentiated while all industry players have easy access to distribution channels. The typical insurance buyer is extremely price sensitive due to availability of perfect substitutes in the market and weak purchasing power. Additionally, information communication technology application which is vital in this sector is underutilized thus low innovation rate in the sectors. Human capital that is required to fill this gap is acutely scarce in the market yet they are key in operation, marketing and sales services unit. This leaves the consumers with only option to buy available products to the known companies in the sector causing the organization that is less competitive to perform dismally due tom lack of competitiveness. This study aimed to find out the effect of value chain on the competitive advantages of the insurance industry in Kenya. This study was based on Resource Based Theory, Competitive Advantage Theory and Organizational Learning Theory. The study focused on four variables, that is, marketing, operations, innovations and human resource management. Descriptive research design was used in this study. A total of 55 insurance companies these companies are licensed by Insurance Regulation Authority. Census sampling technique was used in this study since the number of the companies targeted were small and manageable, 2 respondents were targeted in each company. Primary data was adopted in this study where questionnaire was used to collect the data. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data. To test the relationship between the dependent and independent variable, inferential statistic was used to establish the relationship. Quantitative data was presented using tables and figures. The study confirmed that organization competitive advantage and innovation, human resource management, marketing and operation have a positive relationship. The independents variables studied, contributes 83.4% to the firm competitiveness as indicated by R 2 . The study also found that operation contributes most to organization competitive advantage followed by innovation then marketing while human resource management contributed the little to organization competitive advantage. The study recommends that for any organization that aims to be market leader in the market should consider innovation as part of its operation.