Does Industry Matter? Examining the Role of Industry Structure and Organizational Learning in Innovation and Brand Performance

This research examines the impact of the externalenvironment on a firm's value-creating strategies and brand performance. First,a model depicting the relationships among industry environment, organizationallearning, innovation, and a firm's brand performance is used to develop aseries of hypotheses. Taken together, the hypotheses suggest that firmsperceiving their industry environment as highly competitive tend to nurturedistinctive learning capabilities that improve brand performance. Data from a survey of 252 Australian firms are used to test the hypotheses.Analysis of the data indicates that industry environment has a considerableimpact on market-focused learning and, to a lesser degree, on relationallearning. In other words, firms confronted with a competitive environment learnmostly from customers, competitors, and links formed with externalinstitutions. The results suggest that market-focused learning, along withrelational learning capabilities, leads to higher degrees of organizationalinnovation. (SAA)