The literature regarding the competitive dynamics exists from many years. But when a pandemic changes the rules of the game at a level that some theories demonstrated by many different studies are no longer applicable, a new research is mandated. With these bases begins this thesis, that strives, with a rigorous approach, to analyse the industry dynamics combining the historical fundamentals used in these cases, with some original elements necessary both for the pandemic situation and for the specific market selected: the foodservice in the U.S. In particular, we refer to the latter when we say we want to investigate the relationship between traditional competitors and digital aggregators, or delivery platforms. The final goal will be to try to understand which drivers have been the most important in the market to succeed in terms of financial performance: in doing so, after presenting a fully literature review related to different fields, we extracted from a reliable website all the competitive moves of the firms we were interested into, and categorize them in different move types, adding some independent variables to enrich our study and its meaning. We will provide four different hypothesis, two based on the historical view of the competitive dynamics, and two based on original and new concepts born in the last years and peaked with the pandemic, ergo the delivery factor. We will conclude highlighting the limits of this study and the next steps that could be made to increase the meaning and value of it.
La letteratura sulle dinamiche competitive esiste da molti anni. Ma quando una pandemia cambia le regole del gioco a un livello che alcune teorie dimostrate da molti studi diversi potrebbero non essere più applicabili, è necessaria una nuova ricerca. Con queste basi inizia questa tesi, che si sforza, con un approccio rigoroso, di analizzare le dinamiche del settore combinando i fondamenti storici utilizzati in questi casi, con alcuni elementi originali necessari sia per contestualizzare la situazione pandemica che per lo specifico mercato selezionato: il foodservice negli Stati Uniti. In particolare, ci riferiamo a quest'ultimo quando affermiamo di voler indagare il rapporto tra i competitor tradizionali e gli aggregatori digitali, ovvero le piattaforme di delivery. L'obiettivo finale sarà cercare di capire quali sono stati i driver più importanti nel mercato per avere successo in termini di performance finanziaria: così facendo, dopo aver presentato una revisione completa della letteratura relativa ai diversi campi, abbiamo estratto da un sito affidabile tutte le mosse competitive delle aziende a cui eravamo interessati e classificarle in diversi tipi di mosse, aggiungendo alcune variabili indipendenti per arricchire il nostro studio e il suo significato. Forniremo quattro diverse ipotesi, due basate sulla visione storica delle dinamiche competitive, e due basate su concetti originali e nuovi nati negli ultimi anni e culminati con la pandemia, ergo il fattore di consegna. Concluderemo evidenziando i limiti di questo studio e i prossimi passi che si potrebbero compiere per accrescerne il significato e il valore.
REMAINING COMPETITIVE DURING A PANDEMIC: THE FOODSERVICE INDUSTRY DYNAMICS CASE STUDY
VILLANI, NICOLÒ
2020/2021
Abstract
The literature regarding the competitive dynamics exists from many years. But when a pandemic changes the rules of the game at a level that some theories demonstrated by many different studies are no longer applicable, a new research is mandated. With these bases begins this thesis, that strives, with a rigorous approach, to analyse the industry dynamics combining the historical fundamentals used in these cases, with some original elements necessary both for the pandemic situation and for the specific market selected: the foodservice in the U.S. In particular, we refer to the latter when we say we want to investigate the relationship between traditional competitors and digital aggregators, or delivery platforms. The final goal will be to try to understand which drivers have been the most important in the market to succeed in terms of financial performance: in doing so, after presenting a fully literature review related to different fields, we extracted from a reliable website all the competitive moves of the firms we were interested into, and categorize them in different move types, adding some independent variables to enrich our study and its meaning. We will provide four different hypothesis, two based on the historical view of the competitive dynamics, and two based on original and new concepts born in the last years and peaked with the pandemic, ergo the delivery factor. We will conclude highlighting the limits of this study and the next steps that could be made to increase the meaning and value of it.È consentito all'utente scaricare e condividere i documenti disponibili a testo pieno in UNITESI UNIPV nel rispetto della licenza Creative Commons del tipo CC BY NC ND.
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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14239/1435