A research over the competition power of the Turkish furniture sector

This dissertation aims at exploring the international competition power ofTurkish furniture industry. The concept of competition among Turkish furnitureindustry, resources and sustainability of the performance are thought to worth to beresearched because of the importance of the industry among the national economy, thelevel of employment created by the industry and the share of the industry amongexports. The sector has been searched in three stages.In the first stage, the competition power of the sector has been tried to bedetermined using the various indices about national and international export and importdata. In the second stage, the sources of the competition power which is determined inthe first stage has been tried to be analyzed with the Porter?s Dimond Model. In the laststage, the competition power has been evaluated with a survey result which collects thepeople?s opinions who have management positions among the sector about advantages,problems of the sector, and their expectations for the future of the sector.The calculated index values of Turkish furniture sector for the period 2001-2004 are succesively under 1 and over 1 for the period 2005-2006, depending on theperformance in the international markets. The index values under 1 show that Turkishfurniture sector has disadvantage in the international competition between 2001-2004.The index values being over 1 for the period 2005-2006 shows that Turkish furnituresector has got the competitive advantage in the international markets.However it can be said that the Turkish furniture sector has increasingly showedcompetitive advantage since 2001, as it is evaluated as a trend. It can be said thatincreasing demand in the national market and getting more sophisticated demand,qualified labor force and the foreign market oriented strategies of the firms are thereasons behind this succes in the perspective of the Porter?s Diamond Model. Thesupporting results have been found in the survey conducted with the managers as theresults reached in the analysis of the Porter?s Dimond Model.It has been concluded that Turkish furniture sector has been strengthened itscompetitive position in the global competitive markets in which competition is gradualyincreasing through the evaluation of conducted index study, Porter?s Diamond Modelanalyze and the survey about managers? opinions. But, it is necessary to concenrate onthe advanced competitive factors such as R&D, design, and marketing instead ofproduction focused and cost controlled production to improve the competitive power ofthe sector and sustain it.