Regional, national and international networks: the suitability of different competitive strategies for different geographic profiles

Marisa Cesário and Teresa de Noronha

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2014, vol. 21, issue 3, 317-333

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to conduct an exploratory investigation on the type of competitive strategies that are likely to be associated with different networking profiles. We focus our attention on response strategies related to investments and technological adjustments, and how they vary according to different spatial scales of firms' networks. We report the results of the application of a common questionnaire to a sample of 165 SMEs from labour-intensive sectors belonging to southern Europe. Using cluster analysis, the firms were grouped according to the use of regional, national and international geographic scales for supply, distribution and sales networks. For each group, response strategies were analysed. Our results allow us to observe that there is a relation between the capacity to improve the geographic scale of networking and the capacity to strategically react to changing market conditions.

Keywords: networking profiles; geographic scales; competitive strategies; manufacturing SMEs; small business; regional networks; national networks; competitive strategies; international networks; investment; technological adjustments; business networks; small and medium-sized enterprises; cluster analysis. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=60895 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:ids:ijesbu:v:21:y:2014:i:3:p:317-333

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().