Corporate real estate and competitive strategy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how organisations use a corporate real estate strategy to support their competitive strategy. It provides a theoretical and empirical overview and analysis of effective combinations of firms' real estate and competitive strategies.Design/methodology/approach – The paper constructs a model that integrates three real estate strategies and three types of competitive strategies. Case studies in ten multinational firms in The Netherlands apply the model, and describe and analyse the combinations of the firms' real estate – and competitive strategies.Findings – A standardisation real estate strategy supports all three competitive strategies: lowest costs, differentiation, and focus. A value‐based real estate strategy supports a competitive strategy of differentiation and differentiation‐focus, and does not contribute to a competitive strategy of lowest costs, or lowest costs‐focus. Finally, an incremental real estate strategy is ambiguous, and does not suppo...