The role of strategic alliances in gaining sustainable competitive advantage

In the study entitled ?The Role of Strategic Alliances in Gaining Sustainable Competitive Advantage?, it is examined that whether strategic alliances have any role to gain competitive advantage in sectors with intense competition.Nowadays, interest in strategic alliances is increasing day by day in both literature and practice with intense competition. That strategic alliances provides competitive advantage is known. Hovewer, it becomes to be more complicated in sectors with intense competition. There are examples expressing that the resource of the competitive advantage is strategic alliances in the literature. Moreover, failure of some practices are also emphasized. Based on this contradiction, in this study the role of strategic alliances to provide sustainable competitive advantage in mobile communication sector which is a sector with intense competition is examined.This study, based on theoretical knowledge concerning competitive advantage and strategic alliances, is including Avea, Turkcell and Vodafone operating in this industry. Strategic alliances are grouped according to the basic activities of value chain analysis in the light of data obtained through the content analysis. Thus, strategic alliance model of the companies in the mobile communication industry is set up and the role of it to gain sustainable competitive advantage is determined. As a result, it is seen that supply alliance, technology alliance and distribution alliance increases sustainable competitive advantage as well as amount of partners more than amount of allianes creates value in marketing alliances and service and content alliance according to the basic activities of value chain. There is not relationship directly between social responsibility alliance and sustainable competitive advantage.Keywords: Strategic Alliances, Sustainable Competitive Advantage, Industrial Organization View, Mobile Communication Industry