Abstract
This study empirically answers two questions: Does a positioning strategy influence market performance? Do a firm’s resources have a directional influence on positioning its strategy-performance relationship? It uses a sample of 149 marketing/sales and corporate staff members of two soft drink manufacturing enterprises in Rwanda—Urwibutso Enterprises Ltd. and Inyange Industries Ltd. It uses a structured questionnaire to collect primary data from the two enterprises and uses multiple and simple regression models to estimate the nature of the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. It uses market share, sales, and profitability as comprehensive measures for market performance, and applies Aaker and Shansby’s model 1982 as a measure for the positioning strategy. The results confirm that a firm’s assets and capabilities have a strong and significant association with its positioning decisions and targets. The results also show that managers can use resources and capabilities to strengthen an enterprise’s positioning strategy decision-making function. Further, the study observes that 57.5% of the variations in performance in these enterprises are largely explained by product quality, price, and cultural symbols. If an enterprise emphasizes a limited number of positioning dimensions, its performance results in terms of market share, sales, and profitability are better.
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National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda, Gross Domestic Product—2017.
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Pereez, N., Nathan, K., Dative, M., Charles, G., Charity, K., Labson, T. (2020). Assessing the Role of Positioning Strategy on Market Performance of Soft Drink Manufacturing Enterprises (SDMES) in Rwanda. In: Das, G., Johnson, R. (eds) Rwandan Economy at the Crossroads of Development. Frontiers in African Business Research. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5046-1_11
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