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Top1. Introduction
Logistics has always been an integral part of supply chains (Ahmed et al., 2019a; Cooper et al. 1997). With increasing number of firms adopting integrated supply chain management, the strategic importance of logistic partners also increased (Bowsersox and Daugherty, 1992; Ahmed, Akter, & Ma, 2018). Increasingly complex supply chains and expanding geographic scale of operation had led to diversification of logistic service providers based upon product offerings and core capabilities (Cooper et al., 1997; Benotmane et al., 2018), which were key sources of competitive advantage for the firms. Within such industries, few firms were found to be more similar to each other than rest of the competition, in terms of sources of competitive advantage (Meilich, 2019). Thus, any industrial landscape could be visualized as having clusters of firms, such that these firms within each cluster would share similar strategies, market segments, product portfolios (Hunt, 1972). Consequently, competitive advantage and performance of a firm could be attributed to its association with such a cluster, also known as a ‘strategic group’ (Cool & Schendel, 1988).
Strategic Group Analysis (SGA) referred to the process of inspecting existence of strategic groups in an industry and identifying relative position of a firm in such a group. Since association of a certain firm to a strategic group was suggested to be an important predictor of its performance and profitability, SGA has been recognized as a critical tool of competitive analysis (Claver-Cortes et al., 2004). Indian logistics industry has witnessed a significant surge in terms of number of firms as well as scale of operations of firms (NK Realtors, 2018). With increasing competition, it became important to identify and acquire sources of competitive advantage (Porter, 1989). Thus, study of strategic groups in logistics industry could be instrumental in assessing degree and nature of competition to formulate effective strategies (Lu, 1999). There have been studies in the past focusing upon SGA of specific industries such as white goods (Hunt, 1972), brewing (Hatten & Hatten, 1985), banking (Amel & Rhodes, 1988), pharmaceuticals (Bogner et al., 1996) and shipping (Lu, 1999). However, the authors observed that SGA of logistic industry has not been discussed to a satisfactory degree in extant literature. Furthermore, most of these studies were set up in developed economies such as United States and in Western Europe. Thus, it was the opinion of the authors that SGA study of logistics industry in the context of developing economy such as India was pertinent.
A major implication of strategic group was the emergence of inter-group mobility barriers (Cool & Schendel, 1988). These mobility barriers indicated the degree of difficulty for a firm to change its strategic position by virtue of any strategic dimension such as product offering, market segment, geographic scale, or penetration (Mascarenhas & Aaker, 1989). Mobility barriers posed significant limitations on the strategic flexibility of a firm and could in theory explain cumulative behavior of firms within certain strategic group (Caves & Porter, 1977). Thus, along with SGA, study of various mobility barriers was also thought to be of significance. Thus, this research was aimed at identifying strategic groups in Indian logistic industry and various enablers of competitive advantages within these groups. Inter-group mobility barriers (Mascarenhas & Aaker, 1989) for firms were also studied. The aim of this study was to instigate further research in an underdeveloped domain while providing useful implications for the managers and decision-makers in logistic industry in Indian context.