The importance of the market offer in building the international competitiveness of food industry enterprises

Objective: The article aims to determine the importance of the market offer on the international competitiveness of food industry enterprises. Research Design & Methods: The study consisted of several stages. The first one involved a systematic review of the literature on competitiveness, competitive factors, market offerings, and new food trends. In the empirical part, I conducted CATI interviews with representatives of a representative sample of food industry enterprises. At the inference stage, I used descriptive statistics, the Kruskal-Wallis test, the Mann-Whitney test, the multiple comparison test, and box-plot plots. Findings: The original empirical study shows that implementing certain market offer solutions can enhance the international competitiveness of food industry enterprises. Quickly responding to customer signals plays a crucial role in building competitiveness. Solutions such as the development of traditional food, introduction of diversity of the commercial offer, development and popularisation of own brands, creation of a product brand with unique values for the consumer, promotion of local products, and development of functional food will have a high impact. Implications & Recommendations: Identifying factors that contribute to enhancing the competitiveness of food industry enterprises on the market should be useful for managers involved in formulating strategies, including competitive strategies. Implementing appropriate solutions related to shaping the market offer will enable obtaining many benefits (e.g., standing out on the market, increasing the value of the offer, building customer loyalty and satisfaction, increasing demand) and improving competitiveness. Contribution & Value Added: The rapid changes in the environment create undiscovered potential for new opportunities to compete and create a competitive advantage for food entities. From a cognitive and application perspective, an important and insufficiently researched issue is to determine the factors of international competitiveness of these entities. The study fills a research gap in the scope of the importance of an appropriate market offer (especially in the context of new food trends) from the perspective of the competitiveness of food businesses. In the literature, the offer analysis is mainly from the consumer’s perspective. The added value of this study lies in the gradation of selected solutions and the assessment of their significance for competitiveness, ranging from very high to very low.