Advanced opportunity management
Introduction
For a company, competitiveness is defined as the ability to be able to supply a good (product or service) of a certain quality at a lower price than that of the companies with which it competes. Sometimes it has also been considered that if the company supplies the good at the same price as the competition, but generates greater consumer satisfaction, this indicates that the company is more competitive. Conceiving competitiveness in either of these two ways, it is assumed that, under normal conditions, the most competitive companies would gain market share at the expense of less competitive companies, if there are no market deficiencies that prevent this.
The expression loss of competitiveness is frequently used to describe a situation of increased production costs, since this will negatively affect the price or profit margin, without providing improvements to the quality of the product.
Competitiveness can be clearly defined when applied to a specific company (or group of companies) that sells its products in a well-defined market. In that case, a loss of competitiveness threatens the long-term survival of that company. Applied to a country, the concept of "competitiveness" is more dubious, since a country is not a company and the principle of comparative advantage establishes that, given two countries with adequate production possibilities frontiers, they will find mutually beneficial specializations that guarantee the continuity of trade, without compromising the economic viability of either of them. The Nobel Prize winner in Economics Paul Krugman considered in an article that applying the concept of competitiveness to countries is a dangerous obsession that leads to wasting public money.[1].
Factors that influence competitiveness
Contenido
La competitividad depende de la relación calidad-coste del producto, del nivel de precios de algunos insumos y del nivel de salarios en el país productor. Estos dos factores en principio estarán relacionados con la productividad, la innovación y la inflación diferencial entre países.[2] Existen otros factores que se supone tienen un efecto indirecto sobre la competitividad como la cualidad innovativa del mismo, la calidad del servicio o la imagen corporativa del productor.