| Abstract: | Coca-Cola is globally well-known bottling company, which offers more choices to customers, unique packaging and empowering employees to contribute with their maximum potential. Recently the company (East Africa Bottling Share Company) launched new products for Ethiopian market. By taking East African Bottling Share Company, Ethiopia as a case in point, the major objective of this thesis was to study the Effect of new product development strategies on sustainable existence and market leadership. Specifically, the study was to explore the effect of three product development strategies; product differentiation, cost leadership and rapid response on sustainable existence and market leadership of EABSC. In order to address research design & methodology, the descriptive design method was adopted. Primary source of data was collected with questionnaire designed in five points Likert-Scale, ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Product differentiation, cost leadership and rapid response strategies were the indicators measured by this study. Data was analyzed using frequency tables and simple percentage method. The sample size of this study was 80 staff selected by using purposive sampling techniques. The population is accessed at purposively during working hours from the total population to constitute a sample. The types of data collection were both primary and secondary. Analysis of survey data depicted that the mean, correlation and regression test of questions used to measure the three strategies. Product differentiation strategy is positively and significantly influences market leadership of East African Bottling S.C. (EABSC). Likewise, Cost leadership and rapid response strategy and market leadership & sustainable existence of the organization are highly correlated. Therefore, it was recommended that company leaders should utilize much of differentiation strategy as it has been proven to have the highest significant effect on East African Bottling S.C. (EABSC), sustainability and market leadership. It was also recommended that, the company need to look further and deeper into how to make uniqueness less costly in order to make differentiation a significant practice in the sector in Ethiopian context. |
