Pursuing a sustainable competitive advantage through product design: what matters the most?

Abstract

The modern business environment is rapidly changing, urging every organization to develop competitive advantages that withstand the passing of time and the pressure of its competitors. In that context, product design seems to be very significant, since final products can offer the basis for product differentiation and increase the chance of developing sustainable competitive advantages. The present study aims (a) to develop and (b) empirically test an original conceptual framework that investigates the factors having an impact on the propensity of manufacturing organizations to sustain a competitive advantage. The examination of the proposed conceptual framework was conducted with the use of a newlydeveloped structured questionnaire that was distributed to a sample of Greek manufacturing companies (final sample = 278 companies). The reliability and the validity of the questionnaire were thoroughly examined, while research hypotheses were tested using the “Structural Equation Modelling” technique. Empirical results indicate that various company-related and design-related factors are actually more significant than others, when it comes to the development of a sustainable competitive advantage.