Having a competitive advantage is vital for companies trying to survive in an intensely competitive environment. In this study, the effect of innovation orientation and service provider experience on competitive advantage, which is examined in the context of resource-based view and relational view theory, is examined. Data have been collected from the top managers of 222 firms operating in the tourism sector in Turkey. The findings showed that innovation orientation and service provider experience increased competitive advantage. At the same time, it has been observed that the competitive advantage increases as the service provider experience increases. Finally, it has found that service provider experience has a mediating role in the relationship between innovation orientation and competitive advantage. The study is important in terms of revealing that the use of different competitive strategies together produces good results in the process of discovering different strategic elements that can provide sustainable competitive advantage.
Top1. Introduction
Today, firms face global market conditions transformed by technological developments. In this environment, firms need to be innovative and adopt the right competitive strategies in order to protect their markets, increase their competitiveness, ensure long-term growth and survive, because in the global competitive environment, uncertainty prevails and everything changes very quickly. In addition, the time required for competitors to obtain similar resources and opportunities and to copy a good idea is considerably shorter. Every company that has a share in a market has a competitive strategy, whether explicitly stated or not. However, in the challenging competitive environment created by globalization, these firms should be able to discover different approaches and produce unique strategies that include their own specific conditions. In addition they should also be able to identify their shortcomings and perform appropriate revisions, be flexible and fast learning organizations. This study offers a hybrid strategy that will enable firms operating in the service sector to be more competitive, and focuses on two variables that can provide a competitive advantage.
So How?
The answer to this question is sought in the strategy literature. The area of strategic management tries to discover the basis of sustainable competitive advantage by starting from “why do some firms consistently outperform others?” question and offers different theoretical approaches for this. From a wide perspective, it can be said that there are two approaches in the related literature regarding the reasons why some firms are better in terms of performance (Barney and Clark, 2007).
Porter's (1981) position school, using the structure-behavior-performance (SCP) approach, is the first of these. According to this approach, the way to gain competitive advantage is to gain a good position in the industry. Competition is shaped by five competitive forces (potential competitors, bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of substitute products/services, and competition among existing competitors in the industry). If the firm can restrict entry into sectors with various barriers, it can maintain its position and ensure sustainability (Porter 1981; Porter 1989; Porter 2008).
The second approach is the resource-based approach, which focuses on the distinctive capabilities and resources of the firm. These two approaches (position school and resources-based approach) are strategies known as cornerstones in the competition literature. The resource-based approach is thought to be an overarching structure for resource-based view, knowledge-based view, dynamic capabilities view, and relational view (Baum and Dobbin 2000). This study is theoretically built on the basis of resource-based view and relational view.
In the context of the resource-based approach, the most widely used theory in the literature is the resource-based view, which emerged with the work of Wernerfelt (1984) and whose basic concepts were created by researchers such as Barney (1986, 1991) and Peteraf (1993). This theory suggests that firms must have unique strategic resources in order to gain competitive advantage (Barney 1991). Barney hypothesizes that the resources involved are heterogeneously distributed, fixed (cannot easily move between firms), and thus firms with these resources can gain a long-term competitive advantage. Of course, in order for available resources to be seen as a capability, some critical properties must be met. These resources must be unique, rare, valuable, inimitable and non-substitutable (Barney and Hesterly 1999).
Another theory considered in the context of the resource-based approach is the relational view. The relational view, developed based on Social Network Theory, argues that inter-firm collaborations provide sustainable competitive advantage and bring relational gains. It suggests that different skills and resources acquire through the relationships established between firms. According to the relational view, these capabilities and resources are relation-specific and can be retained for a long time as a competitive advantage (Lavie 2006).