The Choice of Competitive Priorities in Manufacturing Enterprise Based on the Trade-offs Theory

More and more manufacturing enterprise goes into global competition. It is important to make right strategies for competitive position. According to trade-off theory, most enterprises can't get all competitive priorities at the same time due to their inside and outside limitations. So, enterprises should decide the orders of competitive priorities according to their importance. They will focus on the most important competitive priorities. Different enterprise has different choices, and this paper aims for a research on trade-off theory and the choice of competitive priorities in manufacturing enterprise based on it. Data used in this article is from International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS, 1993-2001), which initiated by London Business School. Because the research in most literatures is general, this paper will investigate this question with different variables which include size, country, products, process types, customer orders and market demands. Through this paper, the author tries to answer the question: what kinds of competitive priorities should be chosen by the enterprise? The author also hopes this paper could provide a reference for the manufacturing enterprises to make competitive strategy