Assessing agri-business firms' performances: Organizational and marketing business models of high/low sales and ROE outcomes

Business models are configurations (i.e., recipes) that influence a firm's success or failure. Asymmetric theory can be useful for describing recipes that express outcomes of success or failure. This study analyzes data from a survey of senior executives in 247 South and Central American firms. Questions measure strategy elements and success of the firm. Conventional business measures success using sales and return on investment. The model breaks strategies into two groups, organizational and marketing. The study focuses on recipes of each strategy group that produce both high and low sales and high and low return on equity. The recipes show that configurations of organizational and marketing strategies are excellent predictors of high sales but only good predictors of high return on equity. The model shows that organizational strategies can predict high presence of the marketing strategies. Own brand share proves to be a necessary marketing strategy in predicting high ROE and high sales warranting further research into what organizational strategies are high predictors of own brand share.