Securing enterprises competitive advantage through the management of components of distribution system

Abstract

Due to increasing competition on the national and global markets, decreasing international trade barriers, development of information technologies and changing customer requirements, enterprises found themselves in a need to seek for more efficient business management models. The tendency is observed, that competition on the market is taking place between enterprises distribution systems rather than between enterprises themselves. Therefore efficient management of distribution system becomes a powerful tool for many companies allowing for obtaining competitive advantage. Though the majority of discussions related to distribution systems and advantages they propose started back few decades ago, everyday practice proves that so far many problems related to organization of such systems and integration of all necessary components (elements) into the one common entirety still are unsolved. Bearing in mind mentioned above topics, authors of the given article set out a goal to perform a theoretical analysis of the integrate elements of distribution system as means allowing to obtain certain competitive advantage for an enterprise and present results from the research showing attitude of Lithuanian industry companies towards the understanding of distribution systems and their particular elements as a tools to gain competitive advantage.