Investigating the Effect of Competitive Strategies on the Competitive Power Growth of Listed Companies in Tehran Stock Exchange - Comparison Pre-Sanction with Sanction Period Models

The widespread competition in market, has forced companies to adopt strategies to deal with this competition. This study aims to investigate the effect of competitive strategies of product differentiation and cost management on growth of companies' competitive power and to scrutinize pre-sanction and sanction periods in regards with this effect.

The sample consisted of 137 listed companies in the Tehran Stock Exchange during the years 2004 to 2015. Then research hypotheses analysed for three time periods namely pre-sanctions period (2004 - 2009), the sanctions period (2010 - 2015) and the whole period of 2004 - 2015 seprately.

The results showed that non of competitive strategies product differentiation and cost management had significant impact on the companies competitive power growth in the pre-sanctions period. The use of cost management and product differentiation strategies has led to increas and decrease in competitive power growth of companies respectively during the sanctions period. In addition, during this period, the intensity of the effect of product differentiation strategy on decreasing the competitive power growth has been more than the intensity of the effect of cost management strategy on increasing the competitive power growth. So, the effect of competitive strategies including product differentiation and cost management on growth of companies' competitive power inpre-sanction and sanction periods are different. The results also indicated that the use of cost management strategy during the period form 2004 to 2015 has increased the competitive power growth of companies but the product differentiation strategy had no significant effect.

The growth of Competitive power varies according to the type of competitive strategy which is pursued by companies. An increase in the competitiveness power of companies is seen due to the use of cost management strategy; however the use of product differentiation strategy has not been very successful. The results indicate that in order to take advantage of opportunities and to overcome the threats, managers should consider a strategic management approach based on understanding the internal and external environment of the organization in developing competitive strategies of companies. Also, by carefully monitoring their operating costs and not compromising product quality, they have to utilize a cost leadership strategy. In addition, in order for a product differentiation strategy to succeed in creating value for customers and for the company to achieve competitive advantage, the values created in the company's products or services need to be higher than the customer's costs so that customers are willing to pay a higher price.