Corporate Diversification and Firm Performance : The Role of Product-Market and Business-Model Relatedness

This study examines the relative importance of three relatedness dimensions - product, customer, and business-model relatedness - to explain corporate performance. Using a unique dataset of 170 multiunit chain organizations from 1999 to 2010, we first verify prior empirical findings by showing that related product diversification is positively associated with performance. Beyond previous findings, results Show that related customer and business-model diversification is also positively associated with performance. Interestingly, when simultaneously examined, related product diversification becomes insignificant, while related customer and business-model diversification remain significantly positively associated with performance. This finding suggests that the concepts of customer and business-model relatedness may be better able to capture resource relatedness among lines of business than the predominantly used concept of product relatedness.