협쟁은 기업이 경쟁자들과 상호간에 이익을 얻기 위해 협력을 하면서 동시에 이들과 경쟁하는 그러한 사업전략을 말한다. 기존의 연구들에 의하면, 기업들이 협쟁을 추진하는 핵심적 동기는 제품의 수명주기가 짧아지고, 연구개발을 위해 많은 투자를 해야 하며, 기술의 융합과 표준의 중요성이 확대되고 있기 때문으로 논의된다. 엔터테인먼트 산업은 전형적으로 불확실성이 지배하며, 전통적인 가치사슬이 급격히 붕괴되고 있는 특징을 갖고 있다. 이에 본 연구는 협쟁전략에 대한 기존 연구들의 결과가 엔터테인먼트 산업에도 적용이 될 것으로 보고 사례연구를 통해 그 가능성에 대해 살펴보고자 했다. 에스엠 엔터테인먼트에 대한 사례연구를 토대로 본 연구는 엔터테인먼트 산업에 있어서 협쟁의 동기를 크게 네 가지로 살펴보았다. 첫째, 에스엠은 해외시장을 개척함에 있어 부족한 경험을 보완하고 실패의 위험을 최소화하기 위해 협쟁전략을 사용하는 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 에스엠은 차별화된 콘텐츠를 개발함에 있어 자원사용의 효율성을 극대화하기 위한 차원에서 경쟁사들과의 협쟁도 추진하는 것으로 나타났다. 셋째, 에스엠은 자사의 콘텐츠를 최대한 활용하기 위해 다양한 분야로의 사업을 확대하고 이를 토대로 수익성을 다변화하기 위해 다양한 영역의 잠재적 경쟁자들과도 협력을 추진하는 것으로 나타났다. 넷째, 에스엠은 기존의 콘텐츠를 확보하고 보완하여 시장에서의 지배력을 강화하거나 확대하기 위한 전략으로 경쟁자들과도 협력하는 것으로 나타났다. 엔터테인먼트 산업에 있어서 다양한 영역에 있는 이러한 경쟁자들 간의 협력은 결과적으로 국내 엔터테인먼트 산업의 저변을 확대하고 부가가치를 창출하는데 더 크게 기여한 면이 있음을 본 연구는 시사점으로 제시하고 있다.
The traditional view of inter-firm dynamics discusses that business relationships are either competitive or cooperative in nature. In reality, however, every relationship includes competitive as well as cooperative elements. No matter how competitive inter-firm dynamics are, there are also cooperative and trust factors affecting the relationship. Thus it is difficult to see competition and cooperation as independent but interacting concept of a relationship. The business strategy called co-opetition(hereafter coopetition) means that a firm cooperates with rivals, while at the same time it competes with these partners. The main reasons that are mentioned as a motivation for co-opetition are “shrinking product life cycles, need for heavy investments in research and development, convergence of multiple technologies, and importance of technological standards” (Gnyawali & Park, 2011 p. 650). According to previous studies, the most common motives for firms to engage in coopetition are to develop new markets, to enforce competitive advantages or industry standards, to share the costs of research and development, and to improve the profit of firms in participating the relationship.
Since the entertainment industries are the result of the union of several sectors (ranging from music, movie, drama, ICT, to publishing and broadcasting), they naturally involve many participants in value chains which were once independent. Not only the entertainment industries are typically dominated by uncertainty, but also the traditional media and entertainment value chain has been transformed dramatically. These are exactly the same issues that the entertainment and media industries face. Generally, it is known that coopetition emerges from the increasing uncertainty and interdependence between firms in complex industries. Nevertheless, coopetition between firms of entertainment industry has been discussed rarely in academic sectors. Therefore, this study looks into existing research and findings on coopetition strategy, which could be of use for the entertainment and media industries through a case study of SM Entertainment.
This study observed four different motives of coopetition in the entertainment industry based on the case study of SM. First, it was found that SM uses a coopetition strategy to supplement any lacking experience and to minimize the risks of failure in developing the foreign markets. Coopetition strategy was a powerful means of developing new market opportunities and complementing the lack of experience in foreign markets. Second, SM promotes coopetition with competitors to maximize the efficiency of resource use in their development of differentiated contents. Thus, cooperation with competitors was able to offer the advantage of a combination of the need to develop new contents as a result of competition while accessing new resources as a consequence of cooperation. Third, SM expands their business to various areas to maximally utilize their contents and upon this, they promote cooperation with even potential competitors in various areas to diversify their profitability. Fourth, SM cooperates with competitors as a strategy to secure and supplement their existing contents to strengthen and expand their dominance in existing markets. This study presents implications that such cooperation between competitors in various areas in the entertainment business ultimately greatly contributes to value creating and to expanding the domestic entertainment industry. These implications mean that the coopetition strategy is able to apply this model to the business and management practice of entertainment industry.