DETERMINANTS OF COMPETITIVENESS OF DAIRY ENTERPRISES ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE WIELKOPOLSKA REGION

Abstract

The aim of the article is to determine the competitive potential of selected dairy enterprises located in the Wielkopolska Region and establish the determinants of competitiveness of the researched entities. The selection of the research sample was purposive and was determined by two assumptions. First of all, the Wielkopolska Region, according to the data of the Central Statistical Office, takes third place in terms of milk production in Poland, where the cooperative character of milk processing prevails. This region has the largest number of dairy cooperatives, i.e., 26 cooperative dairy plants operated in 2019, constituting a share, in the whole industry, at a level of 16%. Secondly, for empirical research, only district dairy cooperatives located in the Wielkopolska Region were selected, which, since 2007 to 2019, submitted their financial statements to the Emerging Markets Information Service (EMIS) database, conducted business activities and were engaged in milk processing and the production of dairy products. At the end of 2019, there were fifteen entities that met the above criteria, and this group was selected for further empirical analysis. The conducted research shows that dairy cooperatives, having short term financial liabilities and an average income from sales, have the best competitive potential. The weakest competitive potential was achieved by cooperatives with long-term financial liabilities and a low profitability of sales of offered products. The evaluation of competitive potential showed that the direction of influence of evaluated elements of competitive potential was not clearly defined. It means that we should think over the construction of the synthetic measure for the evaluation of the competitive potential of dairy enterprises, which, apart from the financial condition, will consider other areas i.e., the production potential, investment outlays borne by an enterprise for modernization, the purchase volume of milk and the number of suppliers cooperating with a given enterprise.