Assessing competitiveness relations as a strategy between flour milling manufacturing firms: Evidence from Greece

Abstract

The flour milling industry in Greece is one of the most dynamic sectors not only for Greek manufacturing but also for the whole Greek economy contributing at a high percentage in different economic indexes like value-added, turnover, and number of employees. On the other hand, the notion of competitiveness and its estimation is crucial for all firms because it determines at a high level the strategy which the firms may select to follow (Chikán, Czakó, Kiss-Dobronyi, & Losonci, 2022). For these reasons as well as the fact that no other studies for the specific sector in Greece have been met in the literature the current study holds a special interest both for academics and policymakers. The competitiveness can be estimated either with Porter’s methodology or with the use of financial indexes (Fischer & Schornberg, 2007). In this paper, the second way is selected and the most used financial indexes are calculated for the two biggest in terms of market share flour milling manufacturing firms in Greece. A comparison between these firms as a case study takes place using a combination of the financial indexes for each one of them constituting the main authors’ contribution by depicturing problems and current situation from this sector, while the use of econometric models may be the next step for the methodology of similar future research. In the end, the conclusions and the discussion accompanied by the proposals for future research close the current manuscript.