Intellectual Capital as a Basis of Competitiveness Development: Qualitative Research of Retail Companies

The modern development of emerging markets makes organizations find the ways of enhancing their competitiveness. While the issues of sources of attaining competitive advantages and competitiveness assessment have been widely discussed by numerous researchers, there is a paucity of studies pertaining to the impact of different factors on developing retail company competitiveness under conditions of emerging markets. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the main factors affecting the retail company competitiveness and examine the impact of intellectual capital and intangible assets on it. Conclusions were based on the results of in-depth interviews with 10 key top-managers of retail companies in Saint Petersburg in the period of April-June 2017.