The Virtues of the Vice of Cooperation between Rival Firms: A Simulation Model to Evaluate the Performance of Coopetition Strategy in the Grain Merchant Industry

Abstract

Coopetition is often seen as a phenomenon present in the tertiary sector encouraging the competitors to achieve cooperation upstream the production particularly in R & D. The literature suggest that coopetition's benefits occur in knowledge-intensive sectors. The aim of this paper is to explore how coopetition enables superior industry performance in primary sector. Using a simulation model on the case of grain merchant's industry in the context of coexistence between GM (genetically modified) and non-GM production, we demonstrate that coopetition enables superior performance and competitiveness in a context of market segmentation. The use of modelling enables us to compare a cooperative strategy with a non-cooperative strategy.