Strategic analysis of the value chain: an exploratory study of the industry/retail segment

Abstract

In the present study, which belongs to the Strategic Management field, the authors discuss what value chains are, their function and their usefulness. Besides, they present an exploratory/empirical research on the profitability of the great enterprises which compose the value chain of the consumer goods industry and the great supermarket chains present in Brazil. As a first step, by adopting the dialectical method, they contest some equivocal or incomplete definitions conveyed by Porter, Shank and Govindarajan and other authors. Then through the analysis of the financial reports of the enterprises under scrutiny, they evince those who are winning and those who are losing in the chain segment chosen to be analyzed. The result of the work displays a different picture, wider and more clarifying of the Value Chain subject, a picture which takes into consideration its conceptual, proceeding and utilitarian aspects. As a conclusion, the empirical research revealed that there was not, in the period under analysis, an increase in the gross margin of the retail sector whereas the industries, in their turn, had it.