Practices On Competitive Advantage In The Case Of Moha Soft Drinks Industry

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Date

2017-05

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Publisher

Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Today, more and more companies are succeeding not because they have the lowest priced product and not because they have the highest-quality or best-performing product, but because they are able to respond quickly to market needs and get the right product to the right customer at the right time. This shift toward speed has forced companies to ask what creates the level of speed that customers are demanding. When this question is examined, the answer for most companies lies to a large extent outside their own boundaries. The purpose of this research is to assess the level of supply chain practice, its impact and association with the company’s competitive advantage. Supplier relationship, Customer relationship, Level of information sharing, quality of information and internal lean practice were identified among the dimensions of SCM practices. And also only service quality is taken as the dimension of competitive advantage. Self-administrated questionnaire was distributed to the sample of 112 Factory’s employees at different level, 200 retailers, 22 distribution centers (depots) and 7 suppliers and out of which 92,161, 22 and 7 questionnaire respectively were returned. Carvalho’s Sample Size Determination, simple random and convenient sampling technique were used. The response rate was 84%. The analyses involved statistical methods such as reliability tests and descriptive statistics to measure frequency distribution of response rate and chi square test. The findings show that the case company adopted some part of supply chain management practices well while some part at a lesser extent. Besides, the hypothesis test result indicated that there is significant evidence to conclude there is association between supply chain management practices and competitive advantage. Finally the researcher recommended that robust emphasis should be given for customer complaint handling service issue, the case company should improve its Customer and supplier relationship through proper information sharing, develop formal response procedure for customer service issues and monitor level of customer satisfaction and establish means to involve selected core materials suppliers in goal setting and measure their contribution for the company’s profit.

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Keywords

Supply Chain Practice, Competitive Advantage, Service quality

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