Competitiveness during covid-19 pandemic: new product development and supply chain agili

Abstract

Different forms of competition are experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic period. Being able to develop and launch new products is one of the competitive strategies. With the Covid-19 outbreak, the importance and urgency of developing new products in some sectors have also emerged. On the other hand, the supply chain must be agile in order to respond quickly to customer and market demands. This is another factor that provides companies with competitive advantage. The main purpose of this study is to examine the effect of new product development and supply chain agility on firms' gaining competitiveness during the Covid-19 outbreak. It also reveals the moderator and mediating role of supply chain agility in the relationship between competitiveness and new product development. For these purposes, these concepts discussed theoretically in the study first. Data are collected through a survey to analyze the proposed model and hypotheses. Since the data are collected in the current epidemic period, the study is important in terms of revealing the importance given by firms to these three concepts in this period as well. The population of the study is composed of the manufacturing companies operating in the industrial zone of Gaziantep. Regression analysis based on the bootstrap method was conducted and analyzes were made by using Process Macro. According to the analysis results, it has been revealed that during the Covid-19 pandemic period, new product development has a significant positive effect on both supply chain agility and competitiveness. In addition, supply chain agility positively affected competitiveness. It was also found that supply chain agility has a mediating role in the relationship between new product development and competitiveness, but has no moderating effect in this relationship.