Strategy has become a concept of value to management theory and practice as it relates the firm to an increasingly uncertain environment. However, much greater emphasis has been placed on the organizational processes by which strategies are developed than on the content of strategies themselves.
Furthermore some prior researches have efforted to explain a model which is either process strategy studies or content strategy studies by qualitative methods.
In this vein this thesis explores to examine a relationship between strategic groups, and environment sets, and between strategic groups and its performance (R.O.I : Return on investment. Growth rate in total sales), suggesting a contingency model by quantitative method.
Strategic groups, where each group consists of firms following similar strategies, are determined by business strategies, and environment sets, consisting of firms having similar task environments, by 4 task environmental factors.
Data required in this study were gathered by means of interview and questionnaires from 54 electronics manufacturers in Korea.
The data were analyzed to test hypothesized relationships by using cluster analysis, discriminant analysis, factor analysis, kruskal-wallis anova, mannwhitney test.
The findings are summarized as follows.
1. Within the same industry, there appears to exist different sets of environment that influence different sets of firms.
2. Firms appear to deploy different strategies to cope with different task environments.
3. Empirically firms in the same task environment deploy different strategies, forming different strategic groups.
4. Under the task environment in which firms have poor bargaining power against buyers, those deploying more aggressive marketing strategies outperform others in terms of R.O.I.
In conclusion even though this study has some weaknesses in terms of hypothesises, variables measurement and research methodology, it is the first attempt to examine the relationship between strategic groups and environment sets as a contingency approach, and systemetically the relationship between strategies and environment in Korea.
