International dynamics of product market competition

Summary form only given. This paper compares competitive dynamics for a sample of matched product markets in multiple countries. Products studied previously by the author in the US were matched with products in a UK trade directory and other sources. The sources were used to assemble annual counts of numbers of firms, and for some products the dates of entry and exit of each firm. With this information, it is possible to check whether identical product markets behaved similarly in terms of whether they experienced shakeouts, degree and timing of shakeout, presence or absence of early-mover advantages, and other competitive characteristics that differ depending on an industry's competitive type. Some of the comparisons are based on statistical survival analysis of patterns in firm survival. From the analyses, it appears that technological and product-related characteristics, rather than national environments, determine much of the evolution of competition in particular product markets. If indeed products can be classified into groups according to alternative competitive behaviors, and product-specific rather than nation-specific characteristics determine the evolutionary type of an industry, then a valuable new approach to the analysis of industries is possible. With the new approach espoused here, competitive dynamics can be analyzed within the context of an individual type of product industry, making it easier to achieve robust empirical findings and to probe the reasons for competitive dynamics.