Alignment between Competitive Strategies and Cost Management: a Study of Small Manufacturing Companies

• Autor(a) principal: Melo, Maurilio Alves de
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Leone, Rodrigo José Guerra
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng; por
• Título da fonte: BBR. Brazilian Business Review (English edition. Online)
• Texto Completo: http://www.bbronline.com.br/index.php/bbr/article/view/159
• topic: Competitive strategies; Cost management; Competitive advantage; Estratégias competitivas; Gestão de custos; Vantagem competitiva

This article analyzes the alignment between competitive strategies and management of manufacturing costs in small industrial firms for the purpose of obtaining competitive advantages, by means of a descriptive survey with quantitative approach in which the universe was small industrial firms in the transformation segment located in the city of Mossoró, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The main results obtained demonstrate that the integration of competitive strategies with cost management results in advantages, principally for small industrial firms that adopt a stuck-in-the-middle posture with combined priorities for strategic actions by product differentiation and reduction of costs, and that alignment of competitive strategies with cost management is more favorable to small industrial firms that strive for product differentiation and cost leadership simultaneously, or exceptionally focus on differentiation. The results also indicate that competitive advantages emerge both from differentiation and low cost.