The Sustainability of the Competitive Advantage in the Recording Industry in Visegrad Countries

Abstract

The recording industry is an example of an industry offering cultural goods. It is subject to constant change, associated e.g. with intra-structural transformations taking place as a result of mergers and acquisitions, the changing number of formats and their importance to customers, resulting in declining revenues of the sector in the first decade of the 21st century. For several years, a reversal of this trend has been observed, resulting from the growing sales of music in digital form. The subject of the study is the competitiveness of the phonographic sector products. The aim of the study is to analyse changes in the sustainability of competitive position of phonograms in a timeframe and in relation to phonograms offered on four selected markets: Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian, i.e. the countries forming the Visegrad Group. On the basis of the sustainability value of the phonogram’s competitive advantage index, which is the period of maintaining the dominant position on the market, an attempt was made to verify the thesis that the periods of sustainability of competitive advantage are recently shortened. The analysis uses market data and measures of descriptive statistics. It was noted that within the V4 Group there is no same direction of changes in the sustainability of the competitive advantage of phonograms. On the Czech market, the above thesis is not confirmed. Differences between the Polish and Hungarian markets concern the durability of the competitive position of phonograms representing various musical genres. The applications relate to the potential directions of changes and the resulting activities that may be undertaken by enterprises in the sector.