Competitiveness of the Industries Based on the Porter's Diamond Model: an Empirical Study

Michael Porter offered a model that allows examining why some states are more competitive and why some industries within states are more competitive than others are. In this way, Porter‟s diamond model of national competitiveness was detected as a model with which to assess the sources of competitive advantages of an industry in a particular country and it can help realise the competitive status of a nation in global competition. This model consists of four national determinants of competitive advantage: factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, and firm‟s strategy, structure and rivalry. The Porter‟s theory is that these factors interact with each other to form conditions where innovation and competitiveness occurs. As the purpose of this study is to find out the main factors which affect the competitiveness of the sectors, the well known model in the literature developed by Porter was used. By using Porters‟ model Sun and his colleaguse (2010) provided a new model arguing that four variables of the diamond model (the factor conditions, the demand conditions, the related and supportive industries and the government) affect the competitiveness factor. In this article, the competitiveness of basic industries in the city of Kahramanmaraş were investigated by using Porter‟s Diamond model with the argument of Sun and his colleaguse. To achieve the aim of the research both primary and secondary data collection techniques were used. Parts and the items of the questionnaire were derived from related literature. The prepared questionnaire was applied in the main sectors of Kahramanmaraş. The collected data was analyzed and evaluated according to the Diamond model. So, we grabbed at an opportunity to evaluate the current situation according to the factors in the model and to detect areas that provide facilities to improve the competitiveness of the sectors.