A review of empirical research on dynamic competitive strategy, страница 7

Despite the fact that there are a considerable number of studies that fall under this link, there are few findings that focus on path dependency or the timing of strategic actions. One study by Barr and Huff (1997) does focus on the timing of strategic responses. That study of six pharmaceutical firms showed that strategic changes are not predominately achieved in a timely way, as the pressure to change builds only gradually while firms struggle to align the different beliefs and mental models about cause and effect of alternative strategic adaptations. The findings also suggested that firms which monitored legislative changes were not quicker to change than their less attentive counterparts (Barr and Huff 1997).

Competitor actions and competitive landscape→Competitive strategy. How competitor actions influence a firm's competitive strategy is one of the most important, and certainly most extensively studied stream of research in the matrix. The recent and intense competitive interplay with multiple strategic moves in the domain of pricing and entry timing surrounding the introduction of the Microsoft XBOX 360 and Sony's Playstation 3 represents a powerful and well-known example of the relevance of this linkage. Not surprisingly, researchers within this field have consequently addressed the linkage from a variety of different theoretical angles. It is hardly surprising, then, that researchers have addressed it from a variety of different theoretical angles.

At the most basic level, researchers found that, when a rival makes a strategic move, firms often will counterattack (Smith and Wilson 1995), and when faced with an increase in the intensity of competition, firms will increase the number of competitive actions (Goodstein and Boeker 1991; Miller and Chen 1994), and adjust strategy content (Craig 1996). In addition, strategic adaptations by competitors can also serve as reference points and increase the likelihood that a firm incorporates a similar strategy itself (Washington and Ventresca 2004).

Other researchers that have focused on strategic groups have found that they also act as reference points. Firms are motivated to reinforce group structure by pursuing strategic actions that build mobility barriers (Fiegenbaum and Thomas 1995) and react to deviations by adjusting their strategic actions towards the group reference point (Fiegenbaum and Thomas 1995; Nair and Filer 2003). Strategic groups also seem to influence the type of strategic response. However, differences in speed of competitive response and the general likelihood of competitive responses could not be predicted by group membership (Smith et al. 1997).

Multipoint or multimarket competition also influences dynamic competitive strategy. Faced with multipoint competition, a firm must evaluate and react to rivalry in several geographic or product markets simultaneously (Karnani and Wernerfelt 1985). As in the case of strategic groups, multipoint competitors can serve as reference points to steer a firm's competitive product/market strategy (Greve 2000). This relationship increases as levels of multipoint contact increase, and then decreases at moderate to high ranges, thus following an inverted U-shape (Baum and Korn 1999; Boeker et al. 1997; Havemann and Nonnemaker 2000). As multimarket contact increases, firms also move less frequently but more quickly, following the moves of rivals (Young et al. 2000). The effect of multimarket contact on firm-level action is greater for firms with dissimilar resources relative to their rivals, with resource dissimilarities also influencing the timing and frequency of response (Young et al. 2000).