Resumo

The Brazilian economic challenges that have appeared over the last few decades have intensified competitiveness among companies. This situation leads to the emergence of business groups to face this reality. In this context, one can turn attention to the Brazilian tourism sector. Considering this, it is essential to mention the city of Tiradentes/MG. It is possible to notice the existence of medium and small companies in the tourism sector that are in force with more than 40% of representation and generate more than 50% of formal jobs.

This study investigates the relationships between small and medium-sized companies in the tourist sector in the city of Tiradentes/MG. The relationships of competition, cooperation or a combination of both, named coopetition, are studied. It is a fact that the substantial increase in market competitiveness and the strengthening of business groups have led small and medium-sized companies to organize themselves into clusters to try to overcome the reality presented. This practice is common in all economic sectors, but this study will focus on the tourism sector.

Due to the need to list the forms of relationships between companies, it was necessary to categorize the relationships into three different levels. They are competition, cooperation and a mixture of the two, called coopetition. In addition to this categorization, another relevant factor is the classification given by Iacono and Nagano (2007) for the clusters, which classify them as informal, organized and innovative. Based on this theoretical support, it was possible to categorize the relationships between companies and analyze the degree of development of the clusters.

Primary data were collected through structured questions with entrepreneurs in the tourist sector in the city of Tiradentes/MG. Additionally, secondary data were collected from government agencies in the field studied. The multivariate factor analysis technique was used for data analysis. The technique allowed to group questions into factors that provided the interpretation of the respondents' perceptions. The Barlett method and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test were applied to generate and test the adequacy of the factors from the collected sample.

The procedures mentioned in the Methodology returned satisfactory results. Through the analysis of the specific sample, it was noticed that the 267 companies understand that cooperation is an essential factor in their mutual development. But despite the clear benefits that cooperation can bring, there are still moments when competition arises. In fact, it was possible to identify that the behaviour of competition is present in the relationships between companies according to 56% of the participants of the Tiradentes Cluster.

The objective of the work was to study the relations between the tourism companies of Tiradentes, which was achieved satisfactorily. It was possible to identify the simultaneous existence of relations of cooperation and competition between those involved. That is, the relationship of coopetition was characterized. Such a relationship shows that, in general, companies see benefits in cooperation, especially in access to information, improvement of products and services and gains in scale.

Iacono, A., & Nagano, M. S. (2007). Uma análise e reflexão sobre os principais instrumentos para o desenvolvimento sustentável dos arranjos produtivos locais no Brasil. Revista Gestão Industrial, 3(1). Lacoste, S. (2012). “Vertical coopetition”: The key account perspective. Industrial Marketing Management, 41(4), 649-658. Schmitz, H., & Nadvi, K. (1999). Clustering and Industrialization: Introduction. World Development, 27(9), 1503-1514.