BUS602: Marketing Management

The objective of this article was to determine empirically the factors influencing a company's competitiveness, within the Spanish wine sector. Two approaches, RBV and strategic positioning, have been introduced and evaluated in previous studies that support their mutual compatibility. The results demonstrate this fact: resources and capabilities and strategy explain a company's performance, confirming previous studies. In the present study, resources and capabilities have emerged as being equally relevant relative to strategy. It remains to be studied whether in other sectors it is the same, or if changes in the environment can change this prevalence. It is important to state that the general and financial crisis that has shaken Western Europe has particularly placed serious constraints on the ability to finance companies, stressing the importance of business performance to resources and capabilities. One limitation of the study is the size of the sample, although it reflects the reality of the sector, a larger sample would perhaps have allowed for better statistical parameters, especially in relation to individual companies and cooperatives. As to the applicability of the study, authors suggest that technology is essential, as well as market orientation, innovation and efficiency, in terms of key drivers of business performance. Another limitation could be the type of survey, 1) the authors adopted scales used in similar studies to evaluate resources and capabilities and strategies, this facilitates the comparison between sectors although it may lose inter-sectorial specificity; 2) in terms of performance, the manager of the company was asked to subjectively report the relative strength of his or her winery compared to their competitors, this may seem less solid than the accounting data. However, it is necessary to point out that subjective scales are a common method in studies like this and furthermore, subjective scales have been demonstrated to converge with objective scales in business evaluation being used in numerous empirical studies.