Information seeking on competitors and perception of competition by food store managers

The dynamics of competition from the store manager's point of view has been neglected. This study was designed to investigate the perception of competition and competitive information seeking by food store managers. Competition was analyzed in relation to a set of independent variables suggested by concepts of retail competition and organization theory. The data was based on a questionnaire administered to 55 food store managers. It was predicted and found that the perceived competitive interdependency between two stores was related to the degree of perceived similarity between the stores. The results support the concept of competition for differential advantage. The frequency of information seeking on competitors was related to organizational variables, particularly the store managers concept of his job, but not the degree of perceived similarity between competing stores.