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INFLUENCE OF COMPETITIVE STRATEGIES ON PERFORMANCE OF SECOND HAND VEHICLE DEALER FIRMS IN NAKURU EAST SUBCOUNTY, KENYA
No full textFULL TEXTThe second hand vehicle dealership in Kenya has continued to be an extremely competitive sector. In the context of performance, the sector is considered to account for over 70% of the vehicles in Kenyan roads. This study sought to examine the influence of competitive strategies on performance of the second hand vehicle dealers in Nakuru East Sub County. The study was guided by the following competitive strategies that is customer focus strategies, cost leadership strategies, product differentiation and payment terms. The study uses the Michael Porter generic strategies model and operating cycle theory. The study applied census method of sampling .This study used a questionnaire for the purposes of data collection. Instruments of data collection were piloted in Naivasha using 10% of the sample size that is nine members. The validity of the instrument in this study was examined using the content validity index. The reliability of the instrument was checked using the cronbach alpha coefficient achieving 0.845, 0.795, 0.809, 0.844 and 0.874 for customer focus strategies, cost leadership strategies, product differentiation, payment terms and performance of second vehicles respectively. Descriptive statistics applied in this study include the frequency distributions. The study found that a multiple correlation coefficient (R) of 0.955 was achieved for the study. This revealed that there was a strong correlation between the observed values and the predicted values for performance. The study further found that 91.2 percent of the total variance in performance is explained by the combined effect of customer focus strategies, cost leadership strategies, product differentiation and payment terms. The achieved results revealed that for customer focus influence on performance had β1=0.227, t=4.446 and p value =0.000. These results were tested on whether they were statistically significant at 5% level of significance with a p value of 0.000 indicating that presence of a statistically significant relationship between customer focus and performance of the second hand vehicles dealers. The achieved results revealed that for cost leadership strategies influence on performance had β2= 0.352, t= 8.511and p value =0.000. These results were tested on whether they were statistically significant at 5% level of significance with a p value of 0.000 indicating that presence of a statistically significant relationship between cost leadership and performance of the second hand vehicles dealers. The study examined regression coefficients of the product differentiation influence on the performance. The achieved results revealed that for product differentiation strategies influence on performance had β3= 0.206, t= 6.008 and p value =0.000. The results thus indicated that a unit increase in product differentiation strategies would result into 0.206 increase in performance of the second hand vehicle dealers with the other variables kept constant. The achieved results revealed that for payment terms strategies influence on performance had β4= 0.224, t= 4.916and p value =0.000. These results were tested on whether they were statistically significant at 5% level of significance with a p value of 0.000 indicating that presence of a statistically significant relationship between payment term strategies and performance of the second hand vehicles dealers
INFLUENCE OF COMPETITIVE STRATEGIES ON PERFORMANCE OF SECOND HAND VEHICLE DEALER FIRMS IN NAKURU EAST SUB-COUNTY, KENYA
No full textFULL TEXTThe second hand vehicle dealership in Kenya has continued to be an extremely competitive sector. In the context
of performance, the sector is considered to account for over 70% of the vehicles in Kenyan roads. This study
sought to examine the influence of competitive strategies on performance of the second hand vehicle dealers in
Nakuru East Sub County. The study was guided by the following competitive strategies that is customer focus
strategies, cost leadership strategies, product differentiation and payment terms. The study uses the Michael
Porter generic strategies model and operating cycle theory. This study utilized a correlational research design.
The correlational research design was used to establish the link between the independent variables and dependent
variable. This design is applicable in this study in the context that it sought to examine the influence competitive
strategies on performance of second hand vehicle dealers in Nakuru East Sub County, Kenya. In this context, the
competitive strategies and performance are the independent and dependent variables respectively. The variables
are naturally occurring in nature and would be described as they are on the ground in an ex post facto manner.
The target population of this study was the 85 senior managers and owners of the second hand motor dealers in
Nakuru town. This study adopted a census method to pick sample members. The census method involves picking
of all the population members to be used in the study due to ease of data collection and the small number of the
population size. Therefore, this study used 85 respondents for the study. The study found that a multiple
correlation coefficient (R) of 0.955 was achieved for the study. This revealed that there was a strong correlation
between the observed values and the predicted values for performance. The study further found that 91.2 percent
of the total variance in performance is explained by the combined effect of customer focus strategies, cost
leadership strategies, product differentiation and payment terms. The achieved results revealed that for customer
focus influence on performance had β1=0.227, t=4.446 and p value =0.000. These results were tested on whether
they were statistically significant at 5% level of significance with a p value of 0.000 indicating that presence of a
statistically significant relationship between customer focus and performance of the second hand vehicles dealers.
The achieved results revealed that for cost leadership strategies influence on performance had β2= 0.352, t=
8.511and p value =0.000. These results were tested on whether they were statistically significant at 5% level of
significance with a p value of 0.000 indicating that presence of a statistically significant relationship between cost
leadership and performance of the second hand vehicles dealers. The study examined regression coefficients of
the product differentiation influence on the performance. The achieved results revealed that for product
differentiation strategies influence on performance had β3= 0.206, t= 6.008 and p value =0.000. The results thus
indicated that a unit increase in product differentiation strategies would result into 0.206 increase in performance
of the second hand vehicle dealers with the other variables kept constant. The achieved results revealed that for
payment terms strategies influence on performance had β4= 0.224, t= 4.916and p value =0.000. These results
were tested on whether they were statistically significant at 5% level of significance with a p value of 0.000
indicating that presence of a statistically significant relationship between payment term strategies and
performance of the second hand vehicles dealers
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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