eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY:

Market environment confronted by companies comes as given, and to overcome the challenges in the industry, companies aim to fit their strategy according to the competition. Strategies alone lead nowhere. Successful strategy requires concrete actions. For concrete actions to be possible, they require investments, for example to marketing, to different projects, to digitalization of products and services, and most of all, to personnel to carry out all those tasks. This research aims to investigate the relationship between challenges in the market environment and companies' investments.

METHODOLOGY:

This research applied data collected from 109 companies, which are belonging to 250 largest companies operating in Finland. Two multivariate techniques were used to analyze the data. First, factor analysis was conducted in order to define the underlying dimensions of competition environment and strategic orientation. Second, regression analysis was performed to study the relationship between those underlying dimensions and company investment orientation.

FINDINGS:

The factor analysis revealed 4 factors of which 3 were identified as competition environmental factors and one for strategic orientation factor. Factors found were technology turbulence, market turbulence, competition intensity and service improvement orientation. After identifying different underlying dimensions, these factors were subjected to multiple regression analysis to further investigate the relationship between those dimensions and different investment orientations. In the multiple regressions analysis, correlations were found between those factors and investments in 'Market research and competitor analysis', 'Product or service improvement projects', 'Digitalization of products and services', 'Marketing communication and promotions' and 'Staff development'.