Key Vulnerabilities and the Competitive Advantage among Commercial Banks in Kenya

Globalization and technological advancement have in a big way altered the business landscape, making it difficult for banks to sustain competitive advantage. The need to enhance competitiveness has forced banks to consider competitive intelligence not only as a tool to guard against threats but also as a mechanism for discovering new opportunities and trends. Competitive intelligence contributes to continuous improvement of the quality of products, services and solutions offered by banks to their clients as well as increasing a firm’s innovative capability. Key vulnerabilities have been identified as one of the strategic inputs of competitive intelligence that a firm needs to focus on in order to gain and sustain competitive advantage. This paper sought to examine the effect of identification and assessment of key organizational vulnerabilities on the competitive advantage among commercial banks in Kenya. The target population for the study were directors or managers in-charge of planning or strategy in each of the forty banks in the country. Primary data was collected using a semi structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was tested for both validity and reliability and was found to meet the required threshold. A response rate of 77.5% was achieved in the study and this was adequate for analysis. The study found that identification, assessment and hedging against key vulnerabilities had significant effect on the ability of banks to sustain competitive advantage. The study therefore concluded that key vulnerabilities should be identified, assessed and hedged against since they could inhibit a company’s strategy from succeeding in the marketplace. The study recommends that banks should raise the level of use of competitive intelligence in monitoring the competitive landscape to enable early identification and assessment of key vulnerabilities, then take steps to hedge the vulnerable areas from being exploited by rivals to the detriment of the bank. The study further recommends that managers should be continuously assessing the vulnerability of their banks with aim of hedging against attack by rivals.