| Summary: | Background: In the contemporary economy, companies increasingly cooperate withtheir competitors to create competitive advantages through knowledge creation andabsorption, broad resource pool, reduced risks and uncertainties, and better productsand services for consumers. This situation is termed as coopetition which refers tofirms simultaneously competing and cooperating with each other.Aim: As a newly developed concept, coopetition has not been fully studied in manyperspectives. This research studies two furnishing retailers in China, Red StarMacalline and IKEA China to explore more fresh knowledge about coopetition. Weput our main focus on a single firm level, investigating the premises of coopetitionstrategy, the driving forces behind coopetition behaviors, as well as the contribution ofcoopetition to service management regarding each firm.Method: Our research design applies the comparative case study. More specifically,we adopt qualitative and deductive approach. The entire research primarily bases onsecondary data, including literature and published information about two firms. Themain source of first-hand data is gathered by interviews and observation.Findings: For firms which involved in competition dominant coopetition, thepremises display the co-existence of similar and complementary attribute while incooperation dominant coopetition, bargaining power of specific participants andunique characteristics of firms are key premises.Mutual dependence and power imbalance are two main driving forces behindcoopetitive behaviors. In the low-mutual-dependence condition, actors behavecompetitively regardless their power imbalance. In the imbalanced dependence situation, the actor who has both power disadvantage and dependence disadvantagehas more cooperative behaviors.Coopetition can contribute to the service management arena. Competition dominantcoopetition enhances service quality in terms of products and service diversity, while cooperation dominant coopetition facilitates the customer value co-creation.
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