Developing and validating a multi-dimensional measure of coopetition

Purpose Coopetition, namely, the interplay between cooperation and competition, has received a good deal of interest in the business-to-business marketing literature. Academics have operationalised the coopetition construct and have used these measures to test the antecedents and consequences of firms collaborating with their competitors. However, business-to-business marketing scholars have not developed and validated an agreed operationalisation that reflects the dimensionality of the coopetition construct. Thus, the purpose of this study is to develop and validate a multi-dimensional measure of coopetition for marketing scholars to use in future research. Design/methodology/approach To use a highly cooperative and highly competitive empirical context, sporting organisations in New Zealand were sampled, as the key informants within these entities engaged in different forms of coopetition. Checks were made to ensure that the sampled entities produced generalisable results. That is, it is anticipated that the results apply to other industries with firms engaging in similar business-to-business behaviours. Various sources of qualitative and quantitative data were acquired to develop and validate a multi-dimensional measure of coopetition (the COOP scale), which passed all major assessments of reliability and validity (including common method variance). Findings The results indicated that coopetition is a multi-dimensional construct, comprising three distinct dimensions. First, local-level coopetition is collaboration among competing entities within a close geographic proximity. Second, national-level coopetition is cooperation with rivals within the same country but across different geographic regions. Third, organisation-level coopetition is cooperation with competitors across different firms (including with indirect rivals), regardless of their geographic location and product markets served. Indeed, organisation-level coopetition extends to how companies engage in coopetition in domestic and international capacities, depending on the extent to which they compete in similar product markets in comparison to industry rivals. Also, multiple indicators were used to measure each facet of the coopetition construct after the scale purification stage. Originality/value Prior coopetition-based investigations have predominately been conceptual or qualitative in nature. The scarce number of existing scales have significant problems, such as not appreciating that coopetition is a multi-dimensional variable, as well as using single indicators. In spite of a recent call for research on the multiple levels of coopetition, there has not been an agreed measure of the construct that accounts for its multi-dimensionality. Hence, this investigation responds to such a call for research by developing and validating the COOP scale. Local-, national- and organisation-level coopetition are anticipated to be the main facets of the coopetition construct, which offer several avenues for future research.