Competitive rivalry in the digital market: an action-configuration perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of a competitive action and its impact on the response of rivals in the digital market. Specifically, this paper introduces the concept of action complexity and action variation to delineate the configuration characteristics of each digital competitive action and empirically investigates how these action characteristics further affect rivals' response speed.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses structural content analysis methods to code competitive actions based on the news of Chinese online travel agencies (OTAs) from 2010 to 2015. The cox proportional hazards regression models are employed to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results indicate that action complexity of the focal firm is negatively associated with rivals' response speed as it constrains their interpretation (awareness), motivation and capability to respond, while action variation of the focal firm is positively associated with rivals' response speed as it enhances their attention (awareness) and motivation to respond. Furthermore, the negative relationship between action complexity and response speed is weaker when action variation is high.Originality/valueFurther to advancing competitive dynamics theory, this paper proposes an action-configuration perspective to explore the particular content and quality of each digital competitive action. The discussion of competitive rivalry between OTAs also enriches the application of competitive dynamics in the digital market. Meanwhile, this paper further clarifies the decision-making process of rivalry drawing on the awareness-motivation-capability (AMC) framework.