Relationship Between Competitive Strategies of Small and Medium-Sized Polish International New Ventures and Their Market Performance: Cluster Analysis Approach

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the relationship between competitive strategies and market performance for Polish small and medium-sized international new ventures (INVs). Three dimensions used for classification of strategies are: standardization–adaptation of products, differentiated versus nondifferentiated products and selling products to the whole market, to selected segments, or to a niche only. The applied research method is statistical analysis (SPSS) of data obtained from questionnaire distributed in 2018 (mixed mode: CATI + CAWI method) to respondents from representative sample of 297 Polish INVs. The relationship between variables related to strategies and market performance measures shows weak correlations in line with the hypotheses: positive correlations with increasing adaptation, positive correlations with increasing differentiation, positive correlations with broadening vision of the market. Cluster analysis made it possible to identify a disadvantageous mix of strategies: The strongest product standardization combined with the weakest product differentiation together with addressing commercial efforts to niche markets led to the lowest results on all market performance measures. A non-segmentation approach led to the best results in 3 out of 4 market performance measures.