Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Kai Mertins, Sven Wuscher and Markus Will
74.7% <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> 894 companies that answered <strong>the</strong> question concerning corporate objectives stated that
<strong>the</strong>y aim at future growth while 24.4% stated that <strong>the</strong>y aim at maintaining <strong>the</strong>ir current position (see
figure 7).
Figure 7: Sample according to corporate objectives
Around one third <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> enterprises which answered <strong>the</strong> question regarding <strong>the</strong>ir competitive strategy
stated that <strong>the</strong>y pursue a niche strategy (see figure 8). The minority (2%) said that <strong>the</strong>y are
concentrating on cost leadership.
Figure 8: Sample according to competitive strategy
947 enterprises answered <strong>the</strong> question regarding <strong>the</strong>ir competitive differentiation. Customer
orientation is <strong>the</strong> most important factor to differentiate <strong>the</strong>m from competition (66.8%). In this context
factors like price (20.1%), additional product value (16.9%) and process innovations (15.5%) are
considered less important by <strong>the</strong> enterprises in order to stand out from <strong>the</strong> competition (see figure 9).
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