Authors: David Ford; Hakan Hakansson
Most of those who write about marketing or strategy appear to v iew competition as the overarching logic of business. Commentators usually associate competition with improved economic efficiency and customer well-being and regard it as «a good thing», at least in the abstract or when it only affects others. In contrast to the widespread interest of other researchers and the concerns of managers about competition and competitors, IMP research has devoted hardly any attention to these issues over the past thirty years and the term occurs only infrequently in the IMP literature.This paper seeks to provide an explanation for this omission by examining the value of competition as an explanatory variable in the interacted business landscape which has been the focus of IMP research. We start by looking briefly at the points of origin of the interactive interpretation of business within earlier marketing and channel research. We follow this with a theoretical analysis of the structure of a simple business network and use this analysis to identify where and how the concept of competition may have explanatory value in an analysis of the process and structure of the business landscape. We then broaden the perspective to examine a little of how managers may view competition and how these views may affect their interactions.The aim of the paper is not to provide a comprehensive analysis of competition, but simply to explain how the concept relates to some of the empirical and conceptual research into the business landscape in which we have been involved.
Journal: n.a. (n.a. – n.a.)
Web Address: n.a.
Publish Year: 2012
Conference: Rome, Italy (2012)