Purpose

This study aims to track product market competition and financial flexibility on firms’ business strategies.

Design/methodology/approach

For this purpose, 187 listed firms on the Tehran Stock Exchange were selected by the systematic elimination for 2012–2018. The hypotheses were examined using the linear regression model. Ittner and Larcker’s (1997) model assesses the business strategy (dependent variable). The Herfindahl–Hirschman index is used to assess the product market competition (independent variable). Finally, the Frank and Goyal’s (2009) model investigates financial flexibility (independent variable).

Findings

The findings indicate that competition in the product market has significantly declined the resort of defensive and invasive business strategies and intensified opportunistic analytical and opportunistic strategies, benefiting from financial flexibility and facilitating defensive and opportunistic adaptation and decreased analytic and invasive strategies. Besides, the product market competition contributes to the firm’s financial flexibility and analytical, opportunistic, invasive and defensive strategies. Most of the studies in the field of business strategy analyzed some factors, such as performance (Zhang, 2016), tax avoidance (Higgins et al., 2015) and share pricing risk (Habib and Hasan, 2017). There is no study to assess the effect of business strategy on product market competition and financial flexibility.

Originality/value

The present study’s findings provide some invaluable concepts for firm managers on the significance of competition in the product market and financial flexibility. Focusing on competition intensity and flexibility level can deal with the board’s ambiguities on market structure and competitive status. The use of profitably competitive investment opportunities leads to selecting the most beneficial strategies, leading to a more efficient allocation of scarce resources and, finally, the enhancement of organizational performance.

中文翻译：

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产品市场竞争和财务灵活性对经营战略的影响

目的

本研究旨在跟踪产品市场竞争和公司业务战略的财务灵活性。

设计/方法/方法

为此，在 2012-2018 年系统淘汰了德黑兰证券交易所的 187 家上市公司。使用线性回归模型检查假设。Ittner 和 Larcker (1997) 的模型评估业务战略（因变量）。Herfindahl-Hirschman 指数用于评估产品市场竞争（自变量）。最后，Frank 和 Goyal (2009) 的模型研究了财务灵活性（自变量）。

发现

研究结果表明，产品市场的竞争显着减少了防御性和侵入性商业战略的采用，并加强了机会主义分析和机会主义战略，受益于财务灵活性和促进防御性和机会主义适应，减少了分析性和侵入性战略。此外，产品市场竞争有助于公司的财务灵活性和分析性、机会主义、侵入性和防御性战略。大多数商业战略领域的研究分析了一些因素，如绩效（Zhang，2016）、避税（Higgins et al.，2016）。, 2015) 和股票定价风险 (Habib 和 Hasan, 2017)。没有研究评估商业战略对产品市场竞争和财务灵活性的影响。

原创性/价值

本研究的发现为公司管理者提供了一些关于产品市场竞争和财务灵活性重要性的宝贵概念。关注竞争强度和灵活性水平可以应对董事会对市场结构和竞争地位的模糊性。利用有利可图的竞争性投资机会可以选择最有利的策略，从而更有效地分配稀缺资源，并最终提高组织绩效。