Multivariate analysis for the assessment of factors affecting industrial competitiveness: The case of Greek food and beverage industries

Principal component analysis is integrated with canonical analysis to examine aspects of the competitiveness of two different sectors of the Greek manufacturing, i.e. the food and the beverage industries. Different measures of labour productivity, vertical integration, technological innovation and size of the firms which are considered as critical factors of industrial competitiveness are used in the application of the principal component analysis. Canonical analysis is then applied to correlate the variables of labour productivity with the other variables. In the case of the food and beverage integrated sector, the results of the principal component analysis pinpoint that there are two main principal components: (a) labour productivity and vertical integration, and (b) technological innovation and size. The first factor depicts the internal organizational, structural and production processes changes realized so that the competitiveness of the sector firms improves, whereas the second factor reflects the response of the sector to technological and growth trends. The two variables of labour productivity are affected by the degree of vertical integration and, at a lesser degree, by a common factor of the size of the firm and the level of investment for technological innovation. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.