The relationship between competitive thinking, competitive behavior and strategy executive: A research on automotive companies

The main goal of this research is to identify the relationships and interactions between competitive thinking, competitive behavior and strategy execution. Quantitative research method was used in the study and data were collected by survey technique. The universe of the research consists of corporate automotive business dealers operating in Düzce and Sakarya, and the sample includes senior executives and mid-level managers who actively work in these dealers. The total number of questionnaires used and evaluated in data analysis is 248. SPSS software packages were used to analyze the data. The main analysis in the study consists of descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis, difference (t-test and anova) tests and regression analysis. This research reflects the perspectives of executives working in automotive business dealers. The results of the study show that the most common perception of competitive thinking is active competitive thinking and the most common perception of competitive behaviour is aggressive competitive behavior. The executives also focus on the fact that motivating conditions and information flow should be provided for a successful strategy execution. While aggressive and cooperative competitive behaviors are mostly influenced by active competitive thinking; it is determined that moderate and passive competitive thinking styles do not have a significant effect on competitive behavior styles. Of the strategy execution dimensions; collaborative competitive behavior has the greatest effect on ensuring decision-making rights, providing information flow and creating motivating conditions; whereas aggressive competitive behavior has the greatest impact on the structural adjustment dimension. Finally, it is determined that while the dimensions of strategy execution most affected by active competitive thinking are structural adjustment, ensuring decision-making rights and providing information flow, passive competitive thinking has a negative effect on providing information flow and creating motivating conditions.