Elsevier

Industrial Marketing Management

Volume 51, November 2015, Pages 131-140
Industrial Marketing Management

Conceptualizing competition and rivalry in a networking business market

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.05.009Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
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Highlights

  • Contrasts structural and constructivist literature focused on competition in business markets

  • Defines firm competitive processes as forward oriented activities focused on gaining customers and/or network position

  • Presents a dynamic network framework for conceptualizing firm competitive processes

  • Concludes that firm goals and commitments are nested differently for competitive and rivalry activity

  • Concludes that firm competitive processes provoke business network change

Abstract

Competition is considered a driving force of markets, but how competing shapes the business network is not so clear. We contribute to the literature by exploring competing as a firm process. We analyze business competition literature according to a structural and social constructivist dichotomy. This highlights firm behavior and priority of goals as pointers of competitive processes. We apply the concept of goal priority for a firm's line of action to characterize competing, whether primarily towards the customer or first focusing on the activities of another firm. We explore the distinctions between non-competitive, competitive and rivalry firm activity using a case study of exporters and importers of fine wine to Denmark from South Australia. We find that change in the business network is provoked by competitive processes. We conclude with managerial implications and the opportunities for future research.

Keywords

Coopetition
Goals
Market as network
Process
Wine industry

Cited by (0)

Dr. Christopher Medlin is a senior lecturer in Marketing at the University of Adelaide Business School, Australia. His research interests are in the areas of business-to-business marketing, and specifically the role of time and timing in business interactions, business relationships and networks. He has published in the Industrial Marketing Management journal, the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, the Journal of Business Research and the International Journal of Project Management.

Dr. Chris Ellegaard is Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark. His research interests are in industrial marketing and purchasing, positioned between the broader Marketing and Operations Management fields. Specifically, Chris researches in management and governance of buyer–supplier relationships, strategic purchasing and sourcing, social exchange and the areas of conflict management and attraction between industrial buyer and seller. He has published in the journal of Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, the International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, and the Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management.

We thank the participants at the 2012 IMP Asia conference in Goa and the 2014 Global Marketing Conference in Singapore for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.