Study On The Correlation Between Time To Market And First-Mover Advantage In Chinese Automobile Enterprises

The world is undergoing profound changes due to the explosive advances in technological transformation and economic development. Nowdays, enterprises face the dynamic complex 3C (Competition, Change and Customer) environment. Time represent the most powerful new sources of competitive advantage. From the timing of putting new products on the market, Time-Based Competition strategy urges enterprises to put their new products on the market as soon as possible to gain the First-Mover Advantage。The object of this thesis is to study the correlation between time-to-market of new products and First-Mover Advantage of a particular industry in new competitive situations.The primary research method is empirical analysis, supplemented by mathematical analysis. Integrated with quantitative and qualitative modes, literature review and industrial research are based mainly on qualitative analysis, and empirical study is based mainly on quantitative analysis.The thesis first reviews systematically the empirical study and theoretical study of First-Mover Advantage, concludes the domestic and foreign research results in this field and gives a prospect about the possible trend of research in the future. Meanwhile, the thesis takes Chinese automobile industry as research subjects, analyzes systematically the competitive framework of Chinese automobile market in terms of market capacity, market concentration, scale economy and barriers to entry, and dissects the development tendency of Chinese automobile industry as well as customer value and consumer behavior.The thesis applies ARIMA model of time series analysis on study of First-Mover Advantage, and selects Shanghai VM, FAW-VM and Shanghai GM as objects of empirical study. According to the analysis on actual data, the right ARIMA models are established by a series of steps as adjusting data, rejecting outliers, curve flattering, identifing model, determining lags and testing model, etc. By the comparison between predicting value and measured one is studied, the result shows that FMA is still present in new competitive situations. Enterprises can get sales promotion on putting new products on the market preemptively, however, the effect is no longer apparent and the effective phase of FMA becomes very short. On the basis of empirical study, the thesis proposes that Chinese autombile enterprises should apply Independent Innovation and Flexible Strategy to obtain sustainable First-Mover Advantage. The thesis generalizes 3 paths of Independent Innovation in Chinese automobile enterprises, namely Importation, Assimilation and Re-innovation; Imitation, Integrated Innovation and Own R&D; Advantage transplanting, Low-cost Innovation. The thesis also proposes 3 breakthrough methods for joint venture autombile enterprise, including combining global resources, exploiting the autombile with new energy and developing autonomous trademark. Besides, the thesis provide autombile enterprises more specific framework in fitting, using and making change to obtain sustainable competitive advantage by analyzing the connotation, typical characters and implementation of Flexible Strategy.About the correlation between time to market and First-Mover Advantage, further research should consider various factors on environment and resources, increase the selection of sample and performance indicators, and improve the implementation framework of Flexible Strategy.