Title: Market competition and cooperation: identifying competitive/cooperative interaction groups

Authors: C. Carl Pegels, Yong I. Song

Addresses: School of Management, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. ' School of Management, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA

Abstract: Intra-industry group formation has largely focused on strategic group formation, and has been based on similarity of strategic resource and scope commitments, and on the basis of mobility barriers. In this paper we present a study where competitive/cooperative interaction group identification is based on the patterns of tactical and strategic interactions as found in market competition and cooperation. We posit that patterns of competitive and cooperative interactions among firms provide in-depth information on the configuration of the inter-dependence interaction patterns in an industry. The interaction patterns are mapped onto competitive/cooperative interaction groups using a strategic interaction (action-response) matrix. Clustering techniques are used to partition the firms in the industry into groups, which maximally interact with each other. The partitioning technique was applied to the airline industry resulting in four competitive/cooperative interaction groups. The largest of the four competitive/cooperative interaction group was sub-divided into four clusters of firms exhibiting similar interaction patterns.

Keywords: airline industry; intra-industry groups; classification; market competition; cooperation; group identification; interaction patterns; strategic groups; competitive/cooperative dynamics; mobility barriers; USA.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2007.012865

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2007 Vol.8 No.2/3, pp.139 - 154

Published online: 19 Mar 2007 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article