Sustainable competitive advantage and slow business: A comparative research

Markets have become more competitive by affects of globalization on capital, ideas and people mobility. As parallel to this situation companies in today?s markets where the competition is more intense have engaged in efforts to sustain their lives by producing high quality products, in less time with lower cost. However, revealed ecological, economic and cultural problems which resulted from global business concept that developed and expanded after Industrial Revolution have required to existing business practices into question. In current competitive environment companies? realized the useless of traditional approaches and they looked forward to find new approaches which will provide them sustainable competitive advantage.In this context, this study includes a field research to understand affects of slow business that developed basis on Slow Food movement to companies? performance. Main purpose of field research which covers 206 food and beverage companies in Turkey and 228 in USA to compare performance of companies based on business approaches. The results of research (regardless of differences in business approaches); Companies which have higher local products and supplier utilization rate, companies which have higher rate regional staff, companies where has certificate, companies where have higher rate regional foods in their menus, and the companies where their entrepreneurs internalized the region have higher organizational performance than others. Therefore, in today's competitive environment these variables were determined as closely related to the performance of companies?. When companies? performances compared by business approaches, results show that slow business companies have higher performance than traditional business companies. Furthermore, in today?s competitive environment slow business approach which developed basis on locality, economic, socio-cultural and ecologic sustainability is a new alternative for companies and it has revealed the importance of the local dimensions to obtain competitive advantage.