Qualitative Indicators for Assessing Business Competitiveness

Michael Porter (2009b) argues that it is difficult to give an absolute concept or definition of competitiveness. According to him, “To compete successfully, businesses must have a competitive advantage in some form, either lower costs or the ability to differentiate products to achieve a higher average price. To maintain a competitive advantage, businesses need to achieve increasingly sophisticated competitive advantages, thereby being able to provide goods or services of higher quality or produce more efficiently” (Michael Porter, 2009b).

Thus, it can be understood that: "The competitiveness of an enterprise is the demonstration of the strength and advantages of an enterprise compared to its competitors in best satisfying the demands of customers to gain increasingly higher profits".

The competitiveness of an enterprise is first of all created from the enterprise's strength. This is an internal factor of the enterprise, not only calculated by criteria of technology, finance, human resources, corporate governance organization, etc. separately, but also needs to be evaluated and compared with competitors operating in the same field, the same market. The Vietnamese real estate market currently has many participating enterprises, this is an opportunity for the market to develop but also a big challenge when the level of specialization of enterprises is still low, the competitiveness of enterprises is still limited. Invisibly, it will create great inertia for the whole market.

1.1.4.3 Criteria for assessing the competitiveness of enterprises Qualitative

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Reputation and brand are very general indicators, including many factors such as: product quality, business service activities, marketing activities, business relationships with financial institutions, the level of influence of businesses on administrative units, etc. These are intangible, priceless assets that every business values. If reputation is lost, the business will certainly not be able to compete in the market. With reputation, businesses can mobilize many resources such as: capital, raw materials and especially attention.

employee commitment to the business or local government support for the company.

According to the definition of the American Marketing Association, “a brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, design, or a combination of these elements, intended to identify a product or service and differentiate it from competitors. It can be said that a brand is an external form of expression that creates an impression, expressing the inside of a product or business. A brand creates awareness and trust among consumers for the products and services that a business provides. The value of a brand is the prospect of profits that the brand can bring to the manufacturer in the future. In other words, a brand is an intangible asset of a business. For example, when talking about coffee, people will think of Trung Nguyen coffee, or when talking about motorbikes, they will think of Honda, ... The name of the product associated with the brand becomes an easy-to-remember phrase and makes customers remember the business longer. (Source: Dao Minh Duc, "Revealing the concept of a brand", www. Margroup.edu.vn)

Building a brand requires time, financial capacity and the will to continuously improve the quality of products and services. A highly competitive business also means that they have built a strong brand, which is always remembered and clearly recognized by customers. A strong brand is a brand that can create an impression on customers, stimulating product use. If customers like and are passionate about a brand, they will be loyal to that brand.

Through the successful construction of a brand, the competitiveness of that business can be assessed because: A good brand helps to create trust, peace of mind and pride when using that brand. A good brand helps to build a good corporate image and quickly attract new customers, investment capital and attract talent. A good brand makes it easier to distribute products, easier to find new markets, and at the same time reduces marketing costs, helping businesses have conditions to defend against fierce price competition.

Business experience: A company with extensive experience in the market is also highly valued for its competitiveness. Experience will help the company improve product quality, and be able to grasp and handle complex situations with the lowest time and cost.

Technical facilities Technical facilities greatly affect the competitiveness of any business. However, the characteristics of real estate business do not produce physical products but only provide available products and through providing services to customers based largely on human resources, with the support of modern and advanced technology and equipment. Customer evaluation is through satisfaction with the company's staff and services. Therefore, technical facilities have a great influence on the competitiveness of a real estate brokerage company. A real estate company with advanced equipment and modern technology has high quality services, best satisfying customer needs. Moreover, many branches opened will increase convenience in transactions and attract more customers in a large area, thereby affirming the company's position. Some technical and technological infrastructure indicators such as: number of branches, advanced transaction solutions, etc.

Human resources of real estate companies are the most valuable capital, because most of the areas that bring large revenue to the company such as corporate financial consulting services, asset management, and business activities depend mainly on the human factor. High human resource qualifications will help customers access products more quickly, serve faster, and take better care of customers. It can be said that human resources play a decisive role in the competitiveness of real estate companies, high human resources are the factor that makes the difference between real estate companies. Human resource assessment indicators include: number of staff, number of staff with university and post-graduate degrees, qualifications, experience of senior managers, etc.

Quantitative

Market share of an enterprise in the market reflects the strength of an enterprise in the industry, is an indicator that enterprises often use to evaluate the level of

dominate its market over its competitors. A large market share will give the dominant firm an advantage and lower production costs due to economies of scale.

Profitability indicators are expressed through the following factors: production output value, net profit, profit margin on total production output. This is one of the indicators reflecting the performance of the enterprise. If these indicators are higher, it reflects higher business performance and thus creates conditions to improve the competitiveness of the enterprise.

Labor productivity is an important indicator, a synthesis of factors such as: human, technology, management organization, technical facilities, etc. Therefore, it is a very important criterion to evaluate the competitiveness of enterprises. Labor productivity is measured by the output of quality products per unit of labor to produce that product.

The higher the labor productivity of an enterprise, the higher its competitiveness compared to other enterprises in the same field. When an enterprise has higher labor productivity than its competitors, it means that the enterprise has to spend less on a product than its competitors, thereby allowing managers to come up with effective pricing and product strategies. (Vu Anh Tuan, To Duc Hanh, Pham Quang Phan, (2007), "Marxist-Leninist Political Economy", General Publishing House).

1.1.4.4 The role, importance and necessity of improving competitive capacity

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According to Le Quoc Uy (2015a), in a market economy, competition plays an indispensable role.

Equally important, it is considered the driving force of development not only for each individual, each business but also the economy in general. For real estate products and industries, competition also plays an important role, specifically as follows:

For the national economy: competition is the environment, the driving force promoting the development of all economic sectors in the market economy, contributing to eliminating monopolies, irrationalities, and inequalities in business. Competition ensures the promotion of the development of science and technology, the increasingly deep division of social labor. Competition promotes product diversification to meet increasing demand.

of society, stimulating development needs, giving rise to new needs, contributing to improving the quality of social life and economic development. Competition strengthens the national economy, creating the ability for businesses to reach out to foreign markets. Competition helps the economy have a more correct view of the market economy, drawing practical lessons to supplement the theory of our country's market economy.

Besides positive effects, competition also gives rise to negative phenomena such as counterfeiting, smuggling, tax evasion, etc., causing instability in the market, damaging the interests of the state and consumers.

For businesses: competition is considered a "sieve" to select and eliminate businesses. Therefore, improving the competitiveness of businesses plays an extremely important role. Competition determines the existence and development of businesses. Competition creates the driving force for business development, motivating businesses to find ways to improve business efficiency. Competition requires businesses to develop marketing activities starting from market research to determine market needs, from which to make business decisions to meet those needs. In addition, businesses must improve service activities as well as increase forms of advertising, promotions, discounts, etc.

Competition forces businesses to offer higher quality products to meet the ever-changing needs of consumers. To do so, businesses must apply scientific and technological achievements and production and business activities, enhance staff training to perform services professionally, etc., thereby making the business grow more and more.

For the real estate investment and business industry: the investment and business industry of Vietnam's real estate was formed and developed not long ago, which can be marked when the 1993 Land Law came into effect. During the time it was newly formed, the legal system was not complete, the development speed was too hot due to the huge demand for real estate while the supply was limited. This caused real estate prices to skyrocket continuously, the real estate investment and business industry in the long term was profitable, having a project was profitable. Secondary investors also made a profit. The amount of goods released to the market was immediately consumed. This reality caused the real estate business industry to

For a long time, people only knew how to run projects and ask for projects to implement without paying any attention to competition and improving the competitiveness of their business.

In the current period, after a long period of overheated development, when supply far exceeds demand, many real estate businesses are operating at a loss, holding back unsold products, leading to the risk of bankruptcy. The law of the market requires businesses to improve, innovate, and enhance their competitiveness to win in competition in order to survive and develop. Thus, competition becomes an important factor, deciding the success or failure of each business in particular, deciding the development or destruction of the real estate industry in general. Competition in real estate investment and business is also the foundation for state agencies to perfect the legal system, in order to gradually improve the market, creating an equal competitive environment for all businesses. From there, the Vietnamese real estate investment and business industry will have the opportunity to develop stably and sustainably.

For products: competition creates motivation for businesses to cut costs to reduce product prices, proactively apply scientific and technological advances to improve labor productivity, and research and produce products that meet consumer tastes.

For real estate products, businesses must be more careful to bring customers and investors products that are clear in terms of law, not floating, highly liquid, bringing peace of mind to customers. High discount rates in project products will create trust and desire for long-term cooperation for investors.

1.1.5 Definition of the elements that make up Marketing Capacity

It is finding ways to satisfy customer needs and achieve business goals. Therefore, the marketing capacity of the business is demonstrated. One is through constantly monitoring and responding to changes in the market, including customers, competitors and the macro environment (Homburg C, Grozdanovic M & Klarmann M, 2007). Two is that the business must always strive to create

good relationships with business partners such as suppliers, customers, distributors and government.

The assessment of a business's marketing capacity is done through the following four basic components (Nguyen Dinh Tho & Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, 2009)

Customer responsiveness represents the responsiveness of a business to changes in customer needs and wants.

Competitor responsiveness, or competitive responsiveness, represents a company's monitoring of its competitors' business activities. For example, the marketing strategies that a company implements in response to its competitors.

Adaptation to the macro environment (responsiveness to the change of the macroenvironment), abbreviated as environmental adaptation, shows that businesses monitor changes in the macro environment to grasp business opportunities and barriers, thereby having appropriate business policies.

Relationship quality, or relationship quality for short, represents the extent to which a business achieves quality relationships with customers, suppliers, distributors and relevant government levels. It is whether the business fulfills its commitments to customers or whether the participating members are satisfied with the established relationships.

Practice has shown that the profits of enterprises are mainly obtained from existing customers, however, not all enterprises can do this (cannot be replaced and imitated). The quality of the relationship is directly proportional to the business results of the enterprise (rare and valuable). Therefore, the quality of the relationship satisfies the VRIN criteria and is a factor that creates the dynamic competitiveness of the enterprise.

In short, the factors that make up marketing capability all meet the requirements of VRIN, so marketing capability is the factor that makes up the dynamic capability of the enterprise.

Business orientation

It is the ability to be independent, the ability to accept risks in the market, the initiative in business or the ability to attack business competitors. There are many

There are different views on entrepreneurial orientation. Entrepreneurial orientation researchers believe that entrepreneurial orientation consists of two main components: risk-taking ability and proactive ability.

Risk taking capacity: all businesses participating in the market must face risks. Risk taking shows the commitment of the business to invest large resources in business projects with high profit potential.

Proactive capability: is the process by which a business anticipates future market demands and proactively responds to them. Businesses must be proactive and pioneering in proposing and implementing new ideas.

Creative ability

Innovativeness capability refers to the ability of a business to propose new production processes, new products or new ideas to increase the competitive advantage of the business (Damanpour F, 1991).

Firms that are more innovative than their competitors perform better, have higher profits, greater market value, higher credit ratings, and are more likely to survive because competitive advantage increases with innovation (Volberda et al., 2009). As a result, innovation determines the performance of firms in dynamic conditions (Crossan and Apaydin, 2009). Sustainable competitive advantage depends on the ability to develop internal knowledge and effectively exploit external knowledge to develop the firm's innovative capabilities (Fabrizio, 2009). It is imperative for small and medium-sized enterprises to improve their innovative capabilities by leveraging knowledge from external sources to build innovative capabilities (Borch and Madsen, 2007; Volberda et al., 2009).

Thus, small and medium enterprises need to improve their creative capacity.

action to increase competitive advantage.

Corporate reputation

Corporate reputation has long been considered a vital factor for survival and success in the business world. Kreps (1990) (cited by Hongbin Cai and Ichiro Obara, 2008) stated that corporate reputation has become increasingly important in modern theories of corporate development.

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