Before the Attack: A Typology of Strategies for Competitive Aggressiveness

Abstract

We argue that a firm’s competitive actions should flow from a strategy. Yet, the issue of strategy has seemingly been ignored in the competitive dynamics literature. To address that gap, we distinguish between the logics of innovativeness and competitive aggressiveness and build the foundation for a competitive strategy by outlining the economic mechanisms of competitive action that lead to superior performance. Drawing on the resourced-based view of the firm we develop three resource-based attacks that may be used by competitively aggressive firms. Using this foundation, we derive a typology of