Effects of Strategic Innovation on Performance of Commercial Banks in Kenya (A Survey of Tier I Commercial Banks In Nairobi County)

Abstract

Banking industry in Kenya experience a very stiff completion which sees banks outdoing each other in terms of end products, employee’s retention, their service delivery among other products. When it comes to new technologies like mobile banking, online banking, and mobile application use, Kenya's top-tier commercial banks have been the pioneers. There is still a scarcity of academic research into how strategic innovation affects the performance of Kenya's tier-one commercial banks. Against this backdrop, the present study on how tier one commercial banks in Kenya are affected by strategic innovation market innovation strategies; and product innovation examine the effect of innovation strategies process. Kenya’s tier one commercial banks performance; on innovation strategies assess technology innovation strategies effects on theory performance. This research adopted descriptive survey research design. The intended audience included 494 junior, middle, and senior managers from the 8 largest commercial banks in the country. The sample size of 221 was obtained by a stratified random sampling procedure. Primary data was gathered by administering questionnaires to top-level managers at Nairobi's commercial banks. But for the years 2014-2019, secondary information was gathered from sources including financial reports and scholarly journals. Statistics such as percentages, frequencies, means, and standard deviations were applied. Correlation analysis and regression determined how the two variable relate with each other. Tables were used to for data presentation. According to the study, when market innovation strategies were increased tier one banks performance recorded was a 0.190 when all the variables remained the same. The variable was significant since 0.000<0.05. Research also showed that, while controlling for other factors, a 0.32% improvement in performance was shown among Kenya's top commercial banks when product innovation tactics were boosted. As 0.000 is less than 0.05, this variable was statistically significant. In addition, the study found that the performance scores of Kenya's top commercial banks rose by 0.264 points for every unit of process innovation methods that was implemented. The procedure for developing innovative methods yielded statistically significant results (p0.00005). To sum up, it was clear that the performance score of Kenya's top commercial banks increased by 0.076 points when the unit score for their technology innovation initiatives was raised by one point. A p-value of 0.087 or lower indicates that this variable is not statistically significant. Product innovation initiatives were found to have the biggest impact on the performance of Kenya's top commercial banks. The next was process innovation strategies, market innovation strategies followed. Performance of tier one commercial banks was minimally affected by technology innovation strategies. This study recommended that Central Bank which is the banks regulator to ensures tier one commercial banks strongly implement innovations for productivity, increase the number of their products, change and improve their products, create awareness and position all their brands. This will enhance growth, improve on investments and more revenue will be accumulated.