What is Competitiveness?
The competitiveness is the ability to compete. In the field of the economy, competitiveness refers to the ability of a person, company or country to obtain profitability in the market compared to its other competitors.
In this sense, factors that affect competitive capacity are the relationship between the quality and cost of the product, the level of input prices, as well as the level of wages in the producing country. Likewise, other very important aspects to increase competitiveness are the efficiency of production systems or techniques and the use of the necessary resources for the elaboration of goods and services, that is, productivity.
Thus, a company will be more competitive in a market if it manages to produce more at a lower cost, with high levels of productivity, efficiency and quality, all of which translates into high profitability per unit of product. In this sense, the most competitive companies are those that can assume a greater market share with less competitive companies.
However, competitiveness also involves aspects such as quality, innovation and product or service differentiation in relation to that offered by competitors. Other aspects, such as the ability to generate greater consumer satisfaction from a fixed price, or the ability to offer a certain level of quality at a lower price, are also key factors.
The loss of competitiveness, on the other hand, supposes a situation of increased production costs that negatively affects the price or the profit margin that this throws, all without contributing to improvements in the quality of the product. The loss of competitiveness, in this sense, threatens a company in the long term.
Likewise, competitiveness is a concept that can be applied to various situations of rivalry in life. Thus, it can refer to the professional competitiveness of a professional person in his / her work environment; to that of an athlete or team in a sports discipline; to that of a country considered from a global or international point of view.