The Relationship of Strategic Groups to Business Performance: Empirical Analysis of the Spanish Pharmaceutical Industry

The objective of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the concept of strategic groups and corporate performance of the Spanish pharmaceutical industry. In order to establish the strategic groups, a sample from 45 different laboratories was selected and variables from the sector were used for the period 2000-2003, to which a non-hierarchical cluster analysis was applied to classify the industries in three groups. Afterwards, the Kruskal-Wallis test was used for evaluating relationships among the groups and their performance variables, considering furthermore, the risk assumed by the companies. Results revealed that there is no connection between the strategies used by the groups and their economic performance. However, differences have been found in two out of three indicators adjusted for risk for one of the three groups. Finally, conclusions are that in the Spanish pharmaceutical industry, different firms have found strategic alternatives, some of them related to innovations of an incremental character, for reaching results similar to those of their competitors; conclusions also prove the importance of the risk factor within this industry.