Technological advantage, alliances with customers, local knowledge and competitor identification

Research typically studies competitor identification in stable markets and seldom considers possible antecedents in a dynamic context. To address this situation, this study combines a relational view, a capability-based approach, and a managerial cognition view to predict competitor identification. The hypotheses concern how a firm's customer ties, technological advantage, their interaction, and top manager's local knowledge influence competitor identification. Using a sample of 1348 firms across manufacturing and servicing sectors in China, we find that strong customer ties have a positive impact on competitor identification, firm-specific technological advantage has a negative impact, and the interaction of the two positively relates to competitor identification as does having greater local knowledge. These results suggest that a relational view, a capability-based view and a managerial cognition view complement one another in determining competitor identification in a dynamic environment.