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The competitive advantage of companies and its determinants: the results of empirical
research
Competitive advantage of enterprises depends largely on the strategies that a company
adopts for implementation. Assuming, therefore, the division of the M.E. Porter, there are
three basic strategies by which companies can gain competitive advantage over other
companies in the industry.Therefore, the following survey question turned out to be
especially important: What general competition strategies does your company implement in
a market? The vast majority of enterprises involved in the study responded that the main
source of competitive advantage is the uniqueness is approx. 35% of respondents. Then
concentration (on the product or segment of consumers) is 30.2%, the low-cost strategy is
24.4% and 15.1% of indications for a different strategy. Among the other strategies most
often indicated by respondents was the strategy of quality, which in the literature is often
associated with uniqueness. Noteworthy is the fact, that some of the companies
participating in the survey declared to use of more than one competitive strategy.
Therefore, in practice among small and medium-sized enterprises do not always occur
strategies in "pure" form, so that can be found in the literature. These companies usually
operate on the basis of selected elements of each strategy, creating "mixed" strategies. It's
about combining them in such a way as to make it possible to achieve the best competitive
position in the market (See Budzyoska-Biernat 2015, pp. 24-31).
The key factors influencing competitiveness from the inside are corporate resources and
skills along with a strategy for their use. According to Sliwinski, R. "resources and
organization skills form competitive potential, and linking resources, skills and strategies
affects the creation of competitive advantage, the market impact of which causes the
formation of competitive position on the market. The competitiveness of a company at the
micro level rises along with all the basic factors affecting it (Sliwinski 2011, pp. 33).
Moreover, extending one's business outside the borders of the home country creates a new
source of competitive advantage. Therefore, one shall agree with M. Ratajczak-Mrozek, who
states that "the company's internationalization entails new opportunities for the
development and creation of core competencies, and forms potential for the company's
development" (Ratajczak-Mrozek 2011, pp. 66). Therefore, the advantage such a company
has on the domestic market, may differ from that obtained on the foreign market. Sources
that allow companies to not only achieve this advantage, but also later to maintain it, may
also be different. Based on the analysis of research results, it can be concluded that gaining
competitive advantage depends on numerous conditions and factors. Therefore, in order to
investigate the surveyed companies' significance of the state of resources and abilities in
relation to the needs of building a sustainable competitive advantage in the domestic
market, the questionnaire included a list of relevant resources. Replies were granted at a 5-
point ordinal scale, where 1 means no resource / skill, and 5 - the ideal level. The
distribution of replies from the representatives of the surveyed companies to individual
statements have been described with an arithmetic mean ( ), dominant (d) the median (m e )
and standard deviation (SD tab. 1.).
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