Competitividad de empresas rurales impulsadas por millennials en Antioquia

Abstract

Business competitiveness is defined asa company's capacity to participate in the market with an competitive advantage. It can be analyzed usingdifferent approachessuch as the Resource-Based View (RBV) and measuredfrom a multidimensional perspective. This paper aims to examine the competitiveness of rural enterprises runby a millennial population consisting of undergraduate students and graduates from different faculties of agricultural sciences in Antioquia (Colombia). A total of 1242 emails were sentaskingto fill out an online questionnaire, and 432 people responded (34.78%), with11.91% already having a business in operation (148 enterprises). Once the competitiveness index was calculated, a multidimensional statistical analysis was performed toidentify differences between regions, economic sectors, status(formal or informal), number of employees, andage of the company. According to the results, service companies in rural areas, enterprisesregistered at the chamber of commerce, and those with a higher number of employees and longer time in the marketexhibit a better competitiveness index. The main limitations, however,are observed in the competitive strategy and marketingcomponents. Sincethe competitiveness index can have a maximum value of 10, values in therange of 5.68 to 6.79 indicate a medium level of competitiveness and,therefore,imply thatthe other components of the competitiveness index must be improved to achieve higher levels of competitivenes