Competitive pressure and technological degree of the product portfolio: Implications for firm performance

Szabolcs Szilárd Sebrek () and Betsabé Pérez Garrido
Additional contact information
Szabolcs Szilárd Sebrek: Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Management, University of Pannonia

Acta Oeconomica, 2015, vol. 65, issue 2, 211-229

Abstract: This paper seeks to illuminate empirically a class of drivers of firm performance hitherto neglected in the economic literature. To accomplish this objective, we distinguished three elements: sales volume, participation in technology alliancing, and successful patent issuing. Our findings suggest that competitive pressure posed by larger rivals in an industry affects sales performance negatively, but the possession of absorptive capacity can counter this deleterious effect. Findings regarding the effects caused by a product portfolio with high technological content are mixed. Depending on the performance measure applied, the results show evidence of adverse outcomes for sales, U-shaped effects for participation in technology alliancing and inverted U-shaped results for patenting. We obtained our raw data from the 2006 and 2008 PITEC database, which is the Spanish equivalent of the EU Community Innovation Survey. Our sample embraces more than 3000 firms.

Keywords: competitive pressure; absorptive capacity; technological degree of the product portfolio; firm performance; large sample size (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L25 M10 M19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
Note: The authors thank P. Mendi, A. Barge-Gil, Z. Kovács, L. Szabó, Á. Török, and seminar participants at University of Pannonia (Veszprém, Hungary), Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona, Spain) and 2014 Redete Conference at University of Banja Luka (Bosnia and Herzegovina) for comments and suggestions on an earlier draft. Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Grant No. ECO2009-08308), and the European Union (Grant No. TÁMOP-4.2.3-12/1/KONV-2012-0026) is gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer applies.
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.akademiai.com/doi/pdf/10.1556/032.65.2015.2.2 (application/pdf)
subscription

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aka:aoecon:v:65:y:2015:i:2:p:211-229

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Akadémiai Kiadó Zrt., P. O. Box 245, H-1519 Budapest, Hungary
https://akjournals.com/

Access Statistics for this article

Acta Oeconomica is currently edited by Mihályi, Péter

More articles in Acta Oeconomica from Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kriston, Orsolya ().