Competitive Convergence: Construct Definition and Measurement.

During the last few years the competitive landscape has dramatically changed in many businesses. The conventional boundaries between industries and firms are fading. Convergence is the process by which the boundaries across industries or businesses or markets or geographies or customer experiences become blurred, resulting in new business opportunities to serve customer needs and improve customer value. In spite of the growing importance of such a competitive dynamic both at a research and managerial level, the concept of convergence has not been clearly defined and very few are the attempts at measuring it. In this paper we address the issue of convergence definition and measurement. Firstly, we develop a literature review and highlight three main drivers of convergence: technology-based, competition-based and customer-based drivers. Secondly, we present the results of an exploratory research conducted through in-depth interviews with executives operating in convergent industries as well as business experts. Thirdly, building on the literature review and on evidences from the exploratory research we define the construct domain. Finally, we highlight critical issues for customer operationalisation, presenting a set of measures and some findings from an empirical study