Visualizing interfirm comparison

This paper presents a new way to visualize the results obtained with interfirm comparison. It will be shown how these results can be visualized even if the explanatory variable is explained by more than one firm characteristic. As a result, the new visualization method enables users to see at a single glance: which firm has the highest explanatory variable, what the expected value of the explanatory variable is given the firm’s characteristics, what the corresponding values of its competitors are, and to what extent the different firm characteristics contribute to the firm’s expected value of the explanatory variable. The method is illustrated by a numerical example concerning Dutch retail industries.