abstract
This study employs resource advantage theory to identify how beef cattle value chain actors’ resources are translated into the positional advantage and how that then affects their financial performance in an emerging country context. The study tested was designed to understand if: (1) the resources of beef cattle value chain actors are positively related to positional advantage; and (2) positional advantage is positively related to the financial performance of the actors within the value chain. The unit of analysis in this study is a single beef cattle value chain. One hundred and ninety value chain actors were interviewed and the findings appear to indicate that chain actors’ resources are an antecedent to positional advantage in the marketplace and that this market advantage is an antecedent to the superior financial performance of beef cattle value chain.
Market orientation and positional advantage
In transitional developing economies, such as Vietnam, market orientation plays an extremely important role in creating competitive advantage and is an effective tool for improving business performance (Hau et al., 2013; Long, 2013; O’Cass & Ngo, 2011). The findings in this research confirm that market orientation is a means for smallholders to enhance the positional advantage in the market place and this is consistent with Hunt and Morgan (1995) in a developed country context. The results indicate that customer orientation and competitor orientation have a positive relationship with product differentiation (Langerak, 2003; Vytlacil, 2011). It reveals that knowledge and understanding about target customers and competitors facilitate behaviors to deploy sufficient resources to achieve differentiation compared to the competitors (Langerak, 2003). Thus, it can be inferred that actors in beef cattle value chains in Vietnam should focus on obtaining knowledge and understanding about current and potential customers as well as their competitors to differentiate their products from their competitors. Further, the beef cattle value chain actors need to be sensitive and responsive not only to expressed but also the latent needs of customer, as well as the capabilities and plans of competitors (Jaworski & Kohli, 1993). The results also suggest that related agribusiness policy makers need to facilitate smallholder access to market information about customer needs and understanding about the capabilities of their competitors to enhance customer perceptions and their competitive position in the marketplace. The results also show that inter-functional coordination has no significant effect on differentiation. This is consistent with Narver and Slater (1990) who stated that customer and competitor orientation are two pre-conditions to achieve differentiation, and inter-functional coordination is considered as the facilitator between businesses to obtain the differentiation.
