The Search for Hypercompetition: Evidence from a Nordic Market Study

Some scholars and practitioners argue that markets have become hypercompetitive, decreasing the opportunities for sustainable competitive advantage. We test for increasing competition in a panel of 266 Danish firms from 7 industries over the period 1980-2017. We find no support for the argument that the market across industries has become hypercompetitive over this period. The durability of abnormal business returns has remained stable. Dynamism only changed in the 1980s, and levels of munificence are also stable. We do, however, find a small decrease in the survival probability rate of firms over time. Our results lead us to caution against the use of hypercompetition as a universal label for the state of contemporary competition.