移动壁垒影响下的“战略与绩效”关系异质性——来自中国移动互联网行业的证据

Strategy-Performance Relationship Heterogeneity between Inside and Outside the Mobility Barrier:A Study of Chinese Mobile Internet Industry

本文基于战略群组和移动壁垒研究文献,探索了移动壁垒分隔下不同群组企业在"战略与绩效"关系上的异质性。研究采用在国内外各交易所上市的中国移动互联网公司2011—2014年数据,以企业产品平台规模作为该行业移动壁垒的代表,使用面板数据固定效应模型对研究假设进行了检验。结果表明,在移动壁垒的分隔作用影响下,相同的战略投入会带来不同甚至相反的效果。具体地,大平台企业采用较低的销售投入强度有助于提升绩效,但对小平台企业无此作用;大平台企业提高IT投入强度可显著提升绩效,而小平台企业无法借此获益,甚至还会降低绩效;当大平台企业在其主营业务细分市场中占据份额较小时,提高研发投入强度更有利于当前绩效,但小平台企业的细分市场份额对其研发效果无明显影响。上述发现说明,企业实施某种战略的实际效果与其在行业中的相对竞争地位有关,战略的选择与制定必须考虑行业内的移动壁垒的情况,并认识到各企业在"战略与绩效"关系上的异质性。研究结论丰富和完善了战略群组理论,也有助于深入理解我国移动互联行业竞争格局与发展趋势。

Mobility barrier is generally considered a force impeding firms from shifting their strategic positions in the industry. However, so far only limited attention has been paid to potential differences in the strategy-perform- ance relationship resulted by the separation of mobility barriers. Building on literature of strategic groups, the re- search explores the heterogeneity in the strategy-performance relationship between firms positioned inside and out- side mobility barriers. The sample contains listed companies in mobile internet industry of China over the years of 2011 to 2014. In China,the mobile internet industry has grown very fast in past four years, but few empirical study was carried out. The author collected data from the database of CSMAR and annual reports of mobile intemet companies listed on Shanghai ,Shenzhen, Hong Kong, New York and NASDAQ Stock Exchanges. As this research mainly focuses on firms providing mobile internet contents and applications, pure mobile device manufacturers and mobile network op- erators are not included in the sample. The dependent variable of the research is firm performance. In this paper it is measured by two financial indi- cators, ROS and ROA. Independent variables are comprised of three important and commonly used strategic dimen- sions ： selling expense-to-sales rate, information technology investment intensity, and R＆D intensity. Platform size is chosen to represent the mobility barrier and measured by the size of end users of each firm＇ s leading prod- uct. Platform size acts as a moderating variable in the test of Hypothesis 1,2 and 3. Market segment share is the moderating variable used in the test of Hypothesis 4. Control variables include three dummy variables indicating time periods, size of firm assets, debt-to-asset ratio, current ratio, and firms＇ fixed assets percentage. Hypotheses were tested using fixed-effect model regressions of panel data. The fixed-effect model with heteroge- neous intercepts can control for firm-specific effects among cross-sectional units. And the F-test for pooled OLS a- gainst fixed effect model also rejected the null hypothesis significantly. To address potential endogeneity problems, the paper drew on Davidson and MacKinnon （ 1993 ） ＇ s method to test for endogeneity of three explanatory varia- bles. The testing results didn＇ t present significant endogeneity problems. This paper used two approaches to test the moderating effects of platform size on strategy-performance relationship：adding interaction items to regressions, and using separate subgroup regressions. Results show that the three input strategies can achieve different or even opposite outcomes between firms with large and small platform sizes ： （ 1 ） firms with large platform size benefit significantly from decreasing selling ex- pense-to-sales ratio, while firms with small platform size do not; （2） firms with large platform size benefit signifi- candy from increasing IT investment intensity, but firms with small platform size can be harmed by doing so in some cases; and （3） firms with large platform size can benefit more from higher R＆D intensity when they possess lower market segment shares in their core businesses, but the market segment share is not a significant factor for firms with small platform size to decide whether to adopt higher R＆D intensity. The paper comes to the conclusion that heterogeneity actually exists in the strategy-performance relationship between firms inside and outside mobility barriers. The findings indicated that mobility barriers play an essential role in determining the patterns and results of intra-industry competition, and therefore have deep influences on market structure. The conclusion also suggests that there may not be a set of best strategies universally suited to all firms. Managers and business researchers should consider firms＇ competitive positions when making strategic deci- sions or evaluating the effectiveness of strategic actions carried out.