Exploring intra-industry competitive heterogeneity The identification of latent competitive groups

摘要

Purpose - The paper aims to examine the nature of competition within an industry by proposing and rnexamining three separate sources of competitive heterogeneity: the strategies that industry members rnuse, the performance that they obtain, and how effectively the strategies are utilized to obtain such rnperformance results.rnDesign/methodology/approach - To do so, a restricted latent structure finite mixture model is rndevised that can quantify the contribution of these three potential sources of heterogeneity in the rnformulation of latent competitive groups within an industry. The paper illustrate this modeling rnframework with respect to COMPUSTAT strategy and performance data collected for public banks rnin the USA.rnFindings - The paper shows how traditional conceptualizations via strategic or performance groups rnare inadequate to fully represent intra-industry heterogeneity.rnOriginality/value - This research paper proposes a new class of restricted finite mixture-based rnmodels, which fit a variety of alternative forms/models of heterogeneity. Information heuristics are rndeveloped to indicate "best model."