The competitive advantage of enterprises from the customer perspective

The ability to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage in the long term is one of the most valuable abilities of a company in the modern economy. Companies strive to achieve a competitive advantage in order to be recognised by customers, which is expected to lead to increased revenues and profits. It is important to choose factors serving to achieve a competitive advantage. More desirable are factors that are difficult to copy by competitors and adapted to the opinions and needs of consumers. The aim of the article is to identify the sources of competitive advantage of enterprises in the opinion of consumers from Slovakia and Poland. The article analyses the literature on the subject and uses the methods of descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The analysis of the results is based on surveys conducted on a group of consumers from Slovakia and Poland using statistical software. A questionnaire assesses the importance of competitive factors utilised by companies. The obtained results confirm that quality is an important source of competitive advantage and country is a variable differentiating the selection of sources of competitive advantage. The research contributes to the ongoing scientific discussion, more specifically taking into account the consumer focus. To summarise, gaining a competitive advantage is a complex task influenced by a number of factors. To a large extent, they are related to the capacity for innovation, to the resources possessed, including human capital, and to the ability to respond to market needs and the use of marketing tools. The research contributes to the development of theories in the field of enterprise competitiveness, and its results can serve as recommendations for enterprise managers to identify the key sources of enterprises’ competitive advantage.