Similarità e concorrenza tra imprese : verso una prospettiva firm-centered

The concept of similarity among businesses has always been one of the most important logical categories in the assessment of competition, both in the industrial economics and in managerial analysis. The paper highlights, in particular, how strategic groupings, which initially focused on the similarity of firms’ "structural" elements and strategies, have undergone a fundamental change. This is evident in the different conceptions of similarity assumed over time, in their different functions with respect to rivalry, and finally, in the fact that the perspective may be subjective or objective, i.e. conditioned by supply or demand. Some of the most important stages the paper underlines are, above all, the results from the resource based view, the contributions of the cognitive approach, the network developments in industry groups, and the analysis of competition from the point of view of demand. However, the progressive contamination of the model negates the possibility of truly appreciating rivalry among firms on the basis of generic similarity, while underlining, on the other hand, the importance of considering the uniqueness of individual competitive relations