RELAÇÃO ENTRE RIVALIDADE E PREÇOS, E SUAS IMPLICAÇÕES PARA A ESTRATÉGIA COMPETITIVA RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRICES AND RIVALRY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR COMPETITIVE STRATEGY

This article is about rivalry and it aims to identify its correlations with price determination and its impact to the strategy formulation. The theoretical review is about Market Structure; Market Concentration Indexes; Aspects that impact price determination; and Competitive Strategy. Then, it presents a descriptive quantitative research data analysis, based on a random probabilistic sample of 15 thousand stores in five Brazilian regions. The quantitative data did not meet normal distribution requirements so they were analyzed with non-parametric statistics: Rho and Tau correlation coefficients. The results confirm the existence of a strong and inverse correlation between the rivalry level and the prices. Lastly it presents the implications for the competitive strategy formulation, specially the implications for the companies pricing policy as well as the market attractiveness analysis.