Competitiveness in the company level and the example of Gübretaş

Abstract

Companies should choose proper competitive tools to be more successful in their environment. In other words, being successful is closely associated with being competitive. There is not such a definition for competition which everyone agrees on in spite of increasing importance of competition. That is why a definition for competition was given at the beginning of this work. Even though there are lots of sources written about competition, such low numbers of academic oriented works increase the importance of this work.  Reasons for companies to compete are stated and then external and internal factors which determine the competitiveness of companies are explained one by one in this work. We looked at Gubretas which does business in fertilizer sector in the application section and then Information is given about fertilizer sector in Turkey. After that, Gubretas is evaluated based on external and internal factors and  competitive tools of Gubretas are also stated. Advices are also given for Gubretas to be more competitive in increasing competitive environment.  When we examine what the biggest cost factor for Gubretas is, the most important factor seems to be raw material. The reason for this is that raw material gets the biggest share of all costs in production, around 70-80 percent. Unfortunately Turkey is a poor country for raw material of fertilizers and it depends on foreign countries. Therefore Turkey cannot compete with countries which are very rich in raw materials for fertilizers. Raw material problem does not only affect the cost of fertilizer but also it affects other external factors. For example, it is a kind of obstacle in Turkey for new production companies to get into fertilizer market. In addition to this, because raw materials are provided by import, exchange rates affect the fertilizer sector deeply as well. Unfortunately the government practices cannot defend Turkish fertilizer sector against cheap imported fertilizers. Not only this, the government also cannot provide enough supports for farmers which are in the position of consumers in fertilizer sector. To turn all these disadvantages into advantages, Gubretas bought Razi Plants in Iran and in this way it made investment in a country which is very rich in terms of fertilizer raw material, so that Gubretas gained a very good competition position against other Turkish fertilizer companies. In addition to this, Gubretas uses  wide distribution channels of Kredi Kooperatifi so that all members of Kredi Kooperatifi only use Gubretas products, these factors also increase competition level of Gubretas as well.  In this paper, the reasons for companies to compete are stated and external factors affecting the competition level of companies are given and also factors controlled by companies are also explained. Combination of these external and internal factors affects the competition level of the companies, In other words, it affects the success of the companies. Therefore, the companies should deeply analyze the external factors so that they can determine the best combination of tools for competition. Being able to do all of these let the companies gain more market share in their field. Being big gives an upper hand in the market. The reason for this is that big companies can have more sources than other ordinary companies. These companies use tools like price, promoting, etc to compete with ordinary companies. Therefore, if today's companies want to obtain success in the competition, they should increase their sources as much as possible to defend themselves against competitive attacks by their competitors. To do this, they should determine the best practices for competition. In this paper, the example of Gubretas is taken to examine the effects of these internal and external factors. Firstly, we looked at the external factors. As it was explained the external factors cannot be controlled by the company itself. We looked at these external factors from the Gubretas perspective. One by one, we gave information and explanation about these external factors and analyzed the effect of these factors on the competition of Gubretas. In further sections, the internal factors from Gubretas point of view are examined. As it is explained in first section, internal factors are the ones which are controlled by the companies themselves.  After we looked at Gubretas through external and internal factors one by one to understand competitive position of Gubretas, We gave records of the competing determines of Gubretas such as profit ratio, market share and market value. In this way, we tried to understand the competition level of Gubretas against its competitors.  Interview is used as method to get information and data about Gubretas. Therefore, several interviews were done with executives of Gubretas. In addition to this, we looked through all up-to-date sources about Gubretas and its sector to gain information and data to examine Gubretas from external and internal factors. Internal factors include quality, customer services, price, brand power, differentiating goods, width of distribution channels and promoting, while external competing factors include government policies, subsiding goods, exchange rate, general economic state, entrance barriers and trends, nature resources, providers and the level of competition between companies.  Lastly, in the lights of findings about Gubretas competition strategies, new ad-vices are given in the final section to increase the competition level of Gubretas. In addition to this, Competitive strengths of Gubretas over its rivals are given at the end of this work.