Review on National Competitive Advantage for Marketing Potentials for Off-The Road (OTR) Tyre Industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Among countless number of products manufactured around the world certain countries have developed highly competitive positions in the global market for certain products. This case study looks into the national competitive advantage of nations through the Porters diamond model and investigates how countries could develop leading position in a product facing the fierce global competition. Sri Lanka being the world’s largest solid tyre manufacturer, the country has great potential to develop in the much larger off the road tyre segment. A country being situated in a region where an industry cluster is strong has proven to give the country higher potential success in the particular industry. Further Asia’s newly industrialized countries starting from similar positions to Sri Lanka held competitive positions in the apparel industry. However, the economic development shifted their national competitive advantage to other more industrialized sectors including the tyre industry. Sri Lanka as a country featured with national advantages in rubber sector should look into shifting our national competitive advantage to other industries where tyre industry is a highly potential candidate. The review on the said content has been presented in this paper followed by a literature-based discussion as the main research instrument. Paper discusses the main concepts and related justifications on national competitive advantages by referring to accepted models and empirical review. It has concluded the main points whilst encouraging future research works to examine the ways and means to expand the marketing potential of Sri Lankan rubber industry.