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Received 8 May 2000
Final revision received 12 July 2002
Key words: strategic groups; institutional pressures; differentiation
Drawing from economic and cognitive theories, researchers have argued that firms within an industry tend to cluster together, following similar strategies. Their positioning in strategic groups, in turn, is argued to influence firm actions and firm performance. We extend this research to examine performance implications of competitive positioning not just among but also within groups. We find that performance differences within groups are significantly larger than across groups, suggesting that some firms within groups develop better resource or competitive positions. We also find that secondary firms within a group outperform both core firms within the group and solitary firms, the latter being those not belonging to any multifirm strategic group. This suggests that secondary firms may be able to effectively balance the benefits of strategic distinctiveness with institutional pressures for similarity. We conclude that the primary implication of strategic groups does not relate to the ability of firms to create stable, advantageous market segments through collusion. Instead, strategic groups represent a range of viable strategic positions firms may stake out and use as reference points. Moreover, our results concerning secondary firms indicate that firm positioning within a group structure can have performance implications. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley &Sons, Ltd.
Numerous researchers have argued that focusing at the extremes of the individual firm level and the aggregate industry level leaves out an important subindustry aggregation, the strategic group (Caves and Porter, 1977; Hatten and Schendel, 1977; Hunt, 1972). Following Porter (1979: 215), a strategic group is defined as a set of companies within an industry pursuing strategies that are similar to each other. Researchers have argued that these group structures are important because of their effect on strategic actions and performance. Initial research from the industrial organization economics (IO) perspective proposed that firms within a group are likely to collude with each other to build mobility barriers around the group (Caves and Porter, 1977). Consequently, firms within a particular strategic group face different conditions from firms in other groups. These conditions will, in turn, lead to similar performance for firms within a group and performance differences across groups (Caves and Porter, 1977; Cool and Schendel,...