Working Capital Management, Corporate Performance, and Strategic Choices of the Wholesale and Retail Industry in China

We examine the influence of strategic choice on working capital configurations and observe how the relationship between working capital ratio and operational performance differs depending on strategy. By clustering the strategic factors of the wholesale and retail industry, we find three categories of strategies: terminal market strategy, middle market strategy, and hybrid strategy. Using the panel data of the listed companies of the wholesale and retail industry as our sample, we analyze the differences in the ways companies configure working capital, the speed with which working capital adjusts to its target, and the effects of working capital on performance for companies that make different strategic choices. The empirical results suggest that working capital is configured and adjusted to its target in different ways under different competitive strategic choices. This effect is finally transferred to influence the relationship between working capital configuration and operational performance.