Cost Leadership Strategies and Performance of Animal Feeds Manufacturing SMEs in Nakuru County, Kenya

Cost leadership has become a decisive basis of competition for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in agro-processing, where firms must protect margins while serving highly price-sensitive customers. In Kenya, animal feeds manufacturing SMEs operate in an environment in which raw materials account for an estimated 70–80% of production costs, and many firms continue to experience low profitability, unstable sales and weak market positions owing to volatile input prices, production inefficiencies, limited automation and small production volumes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to establish the influence of cost leadership strategies on the performance of animal feeds manufacturing SMEs in Nakuru County, Kenya. It specifically examined the influence of operational efficiency, supplier management, technology adoption and economies of scale strategies on performance. The study was anchored on Porter’s Generic Strategies Theory and supported by the Resource-Based View, Transaction Cost Economics and Economies of Scale Theory. A descriptive and explanatory research design was adopted, targeting the 47 animal feeds manufacturing firms registered in Nakuru County, of which 46 were verified as eligible and studied through a census. Data were collected from one owner or senior manager per firm using a structured questionnaire and analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis, and the results were presented in tables and discussed. The findings revealed that technology adoption had the strongest positive and significant influence on performance (β = 0.455, p