Study on the competitiveness of the Brazilian pharmaceutical industry based on Porter's typology

The main purpose of this study is to evaluate how the strategies chosen by the firms inserted in the Brazilian pharmaceutical industry within the period 1995-1998 have influenced their strategic positioning and consequently affected their performance. Based on Michael Porter's theory on competitive strategies, the study presents the pertinent strategies for firms operating in the Brazilian pharmaceutical industry and identifies the strategic groups formed by the firms components of the industrial segment under analysis. The research was implemented by means of gathering a data bank comprising 50 laboratories. The database contains information on the strategic behavior of those firms based on eleven variables concerning the strategies pursued as well as on four variables concerning performance. Data were then statistically analyzed through the use of the following tools: factor analysis; cluster analysis; and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The results obtained suggest that the differences in the average performance among the strategic groups identified may be explained by the different strategic decisions taken by each firm of the sample.