A Study of The Relationship Between Strategic Groups and Operating Performance in Taiwan''s Internet Service Providers

• Main Authors: Chiu, Po-Ching, 邱柏青
• Other Authors: Yi-ming Tseng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2000
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/33406851175253223887

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 國際貿易學系 === 88 === This paper mainly applies the theory of strategic group to analyze the strategy types of Taiwan’s Internet service providers. In this paper, the sampled service providers are firstly divided into several strategic groups, and the strategies of each group are researched and presented respectively. In the last step, this paper tests if there is any differentiation in terms of operating performance among different strategic groups. The first three of the four strategic dimensions proposed by Hofer & Schendel (1978), “Scope”, ”Resources Commitment”, and “Competitive Advantage”, are used to develop twenty-one strategic variables of competition. After applying factor analysis, seven factor dimensions are retrieved. Based on the two-stage cluster analysis, each sampled provider is scored on the seven factor dimensions, and grouped according to their factor scores. Two strategic groups are found and named considering their features on the common factor dimensions. Group 1 is “Market-oriented early entrant Group” and Group 2 is “Specific Segment-focus Group.” Once the two strategic groups are confirmed, this paper uses the GLM-Multivariate and Mann-Whitney U of SPSS to test the differences of strategic behaviors and operation between the two groups. And the result indicates that there is obvious differentiation between the two strategic groups in terms of over-all competitive factors, “Scope”, “Resources Commitment”, as well as “Competitive Advantage”.As for the indicator of operating performance, there is no significant difference in statistics between two groups. However, in all four operating performance indicators, significant difference can be found in two indicators of “valid number of subscribers” and “productivity of each employees” between two groups in the methodology of nonparametric Mann-Whitney U tests. Furthermore, the performance of group 1, market—oriented early entrant is better than group 2, specific segment-focus group. Mobility barrier is also included in this research. According to documents, mobility barrier can be categorized into three main elements from 21 strategic variables. These three variables are “market-related strategy ”、 “industrial supply feature” and “players features”. The result is that there is significant difference in these three variables between two strategic groups. The performance of Group 1, market—oriented early entrant is better than group 2, specific segment-focus group. Finally, I compare the performance in mobility barriers and operating performance indicators between two groups and find the group with higher mobility barrier has better performance in operation efficiency.