Strategic Decision Making Trajectory of Competitive Imitation - A Multi-Competitor Market Analysis

What are the processes within organizations that lead to decisions regarding competitive actions? Within markets consisting of at least two players, strategy or action imitation is a common phenomenon. Laggard firms often choose the current market leader as a performance and strategic benchmark. We know, however, very little about the decision making processes that motivate and drive these imitation decisions. Neither within a dyadic nor within a multi-competitor environment, can we conclude on when a rival imitation is advisable. We propose to explore how such decisions come to be, by investigating the strategic decision making process. We aim to investigate this phenomenon by making use of fine grained and comprehensive qualitative and quantitative data from multi-competitor (fleet) sailing race the Volvo Ocean Race 2014/2015 (VOR).