Firm's Marketing Competitive Actions, Strategic Groups And Sales Performance

In the marketing practice, the competition to the sales performance among firms is more and more fierce. Traditional companies tend to focus on one-sided way thinking of marketing competition, this approach has been unable to cope with the changing marketing environment. To win and maintain a competitive advantage, firms must take a more comprehensive, more diverse portfolio of competitive actions. The literature of Competitive Actions Repertoire transfer the research focus to the micro level of firm's marketing competitive actions, it provides a new dimension of explanation for firm's performance. However, the existing literature on this field were still focus on the firm's marketing competitive action itself, It has not yet pay attention to the impact of industry structure on the relationship between marketing competitive action and firm performance, at the same time, the firm's competitor is still not distinguished from the perspective of industry structure. If it can join the consideration of the industry structure into the analysis of the firm's marketing competitive action, it will be a breakthrough and development of existing research methods. Therefore, in the analysis of firm's marketing competitive action and sales performance, this thesis will join the view of industry structure. Strategic group as a result of the separation of mobile barriers in an industry, it will be used as a tool to describe the industry structure. In addition, because all kinds of marketing competitive actions were to strive for the promotion of sales or to compete for customers, we take the company's sales performance as a dependent variable in this thesis.Based on the above research background, under the theoretical framework of Marketing Competitive Actions Repertoire and Strategic Group,There are three research tasks in this thesis:Firstly, In the level of firm's marketing competitive action of the whole industry, we try to find the structure dimension that can describe the marketing action content of the firms, and then examine the relationship between firm's marketing competitive action and sales performance. At the same time, in order to consider the impact of firm's competitors, on the basis of the measurement of the market rivalry faced by firms, the moderate role of market rivalry on the relationship between marketing competitive action and sales performance should be preliminary discussed. Secondly, based on the nature of the strategic group, we will divide the samples into several strategic groups, and then explore the following questions:in each strategic group, what is the relationship between firm's marketing competitive action and sales performance? What is the changetrend in the relationship between strategic groups and sales performance in every group? This can help us to understand the influence mechanism of the firm's strategic group attribute on the relationship between marketing competitive action and sales performance. The third, according to whether the competitors belong to the same strategic group, we can divide the market rivalry between firms in the industry into two categories: The first category is the market rivalry between firms in the same strategic group (Simply call: Within Group Rivalry), The second category is the market rivalry between firms in different strategic group (Simply call: Between Group Rivalry), Based on the calculation and measurement of the two kinds of market rivalry, we will test the moderate effect of these two kinds of market rivalry on the relationship of firm's marketing competitive action and sales performance in each strategic group, and compare the moderate effect among different strategic groups. In combination with the research task, we use the data of 14 regional telecom firms in Asia to do the empirical test, the main conclusions are as follows:The study 1 examines the relationship between firm's marketing competitive action and sales performance, the test results show that there is a significant positive relationship between the volume of marketing competitive action and sales performance, and there is also a significant positive relationship between the heterogeneity of marketing competitive action and sales performance, but the relationship between the simplicity of marketing competitive action and sales performance is significantly negative. On this basis, taking into account the importance of market rivalry to firm's sales performance, the author examined the moderate effect of market rivalry on the three main effects, the results show that the market rivalry has a significantly negative moderate effect of the relationship between the volume of marketing competitive action and sales performance, and it is also has a significantly negative moderate effect of the relationship between the heterogeneity of marketing competitive action and sales performance, but it has a significantly positive moderate effect of the relationship between the simplicity of marketing competitive action and sales performance.The study 2 is based on the perspective of mobile barriers, According to the differences in resource allocation and business scope in an industry, the author divided the sample into three strategic groups, which consist of three scale types of firms: large, medium and small firms. On this basis, the author analyzes the influence of firm's marketing competitive action on the sales performance in each strategic group. The test results show that, there are obvious differences in firm's sales performance among the three strategic groups. From the comparison of the three groups, with the increase in the size of firm members that constitute a strategic group, the positive effect between the volume of marketing competitive action and sales performance is increase, and the positive effect between the heterogeneity of marketing competitive action and sales performance is increase, It is worth noting that, with the increase in the size of firm members that constitute a strategic group, the negative effect between the simplicity of marketing competitive action and sales performance is also increase. To sum up, compared with the strategy group comprised with smaller firms, in the strategy group comprised with larger firms, when the volume and heterogeneity of marketing competitive action increases, firm's sales performance will be more positively impacted, when the simplicity of marketing competitive action increases, firm's sales performance will be more negatively impacted. The research results show that the strategic group attributes of the firms has effect on the relationship between marketing competitive action and the sales performance.The study 3 adopted the same grouping method as the study 2, the author divided the sample into three strategic groups according to the differences in resource allocation and business scope of firms in the industry. On this basis, the author defined and measured two kinds of market rivalry between firms:The first category is Within Group Rivalry (the market rivalry between firms in the same strategic group), the second category is Between Group Rivalry (the market rivalry between firms in different strategic groups). Combined with the research task, the author examines the moderate effects of the two kinds of market rivalry on the relationship between marketing competitive action and the sales performance in each strategic group, and further compares the changes trend of these effects in different groups. The test results related the Within Group Rivalry show that:Within Group Rivalry has a significantly negative moderate effect on the relationship between the volume of marketing competitive action and sales performance; and it is also has a significantly negative moderate effect on the relationship between the heterogeneity of marketing competitive action and sales performance; However, Within Group Rivalry has a significantly positive moderate effect on the relationship between the simplicity of marketing competitive action and sales performance. In addition, from the comparison of the three groups, with the increase in the size of firm members that constitute a strategic group, the corresponding moderate effect on the relationship between marketing competitive action repertoire and sales performance is decrease. The test results related the Between Group Rivalry show that: Between Group Rivalry has a significantly negative moderate effect on the relationship between the volume of marketing competitive action and sales performance; and it is also has a significantly negative moderate effect on the relationship between the heterogeneity of marketing competitive action and sales performance; However, Between Group Rivalry has a significantly positive moderate effect on the relationship between the simplicity of marketing competitive action and sales performance. In addition, from the comparison of the three groups, with the increase in the size of firm members that constitute a strategic group, the corresponding moderate effect on the on the relationship between marketing competitive action repertoire and sales performance is increase. The research results show that, in the strategy group comprised with smaller firms, Within Group Rivalry will has a more negative effect on the relationship between marketing competitive action and sales performance; On the contrary, in the strategy group comprised with larger firms, Between Group Rivalry will has a more negative effect on the relationship between marketing competitive action and sales performance.In this thesis, on the basis of the attention to firm's marketing competitive action, the author not only divides the strategic groups within the industry, but also distinguishes the different competitor that the firms face, it realized precise definition of the competitive position of the firm in an industry,the "competitive position" in this thesis provides an important "map"to understand the relationship between marketing competitive actions and sales performance. The theoretical contributions of the thesis are as follows:Firstly, by taking into account marketing competitive action and industry structure, the thesis realized the combination of static analysis and dynamic analysis. Secondly, based on the results of strategic group division, the effect between firm's marketing competitive action and sales performance is analyzed, the thesis realized the linkage of behavioral perspective and structural perspective in marketing strategy field. The third, it broke through the traditional analytical thinking in the field of marketing competitive strategy, and realized the linkage of competitor analysis perspective and firm's interplay action, the thesis abandoned the assumption of "homogeneity of rivalry" held by the traditional competition theory, puts forward and proves the existence of "heterogeneity" in the market rivalry between firms in the industry. The fourth, with the classification and measurement of the real competitive action, the marketing competitive actions were divided into four categories: promotion competitive actions, product competitive actions, function competitive actions, service competitive actions, the four categories of marketing competitive actions were described by three indicators:volume, simplicity, heterogeneity. It is a preliminary attempt to describe firm's marketing competitive actions in a comprehensive perspective, we hope that it can fuse the contradictory conclusions in the previous literature, and enhance the explanation of economic reality.