Competitiveness of trading companies - the role of selected knowledge sources

Marcin Soniewicki

Abstract

Knowledge is currently crucial resource for every company that wants to become, and remain competitive. Unfortunately, its elements quickly become out of date. Enterprises need to constantly acquire or develop new knowledge in order to not be overtaken by competitors. Moreover, knowledge elements that are priceless for one kind of company might be useless for the other. That is why this article concentrates on the specific type of firms - wholesale and retail trading companies. During the quantitative research I have analyzed 240 such entities (1) regarding the intensity of use of twelve most popular, in the knowledge management literature, knowledge sources. The results show that the most intensively used are market related knowledge sources, like: customers, suppliers and competitors. Very important for this type of firms are also publications, external trainings and market research. Nevertheless, the key conclusion is the result of comparison of number of knowledge sources used by trading companies and their competitiveness index. It shows that the more knowledge sources such firms use, at least with average intensity, the more competitive they are.