Abstract

• This study aims to analyse competitive strategies and supermarkets’ performance. Supermarkets have become very competitive today and are facing challenges due to the changing lifestyles and the demanding nature of today consumers. Amid heightened competition, supermarket managers need to understand the impact of different competitive strategies in order to choose appropriate ones that lead to survival and prosperity of the supermarkets' performance. The purpose of the study is to identify the competitive strategies adopted by the supermarkets and to analyze the linkages between the competitive strategies and the performances of supermarkets at determining the mediating effects of firms' operational characteristics, on the link between competitive strategies and performance of supermarkets in Yangon. Primary data are collected from (15) senior managers and (35) branch managers of supermarkets through in-depth personal interviews and a questionnaire survey regarding their competing practices and organization performance. Moreover, performance data are also collected from (481) employees and (512) customers from selected supermarkets in Yangon. This study applies Path Analysis in order to identify the direct and indirect effects of operational characteristics between competitive strategies and firm performance. The study found that cost leadership strategy is practiced by ten supermarkets; differentiation strategy by three supermarkets and focus strategy by two supermarkets. The cost leadership strategy has significant negative effect but the differentiation and focus strategies have significant positive effect on supermarket's performance measuring in terms of firms' growth, employees' satisfaction and customers' satisfaction. Generally, operational characteristics have the mediating effects on firm performance when supermarkets practices differentiation focus strategies but is no mediating effect when practicing cost leadership strategy. Thus, it can be concluded that differentiation and focus strategies are currently appropriate as competitive strategies for improving the performance of supermarkets in Myanmar.