strategy should always take into account this need to bring value to the customer. The creation of value is, therefore, infuenced in real time by the context of the relationships between companies in the market and will be in constant mutation. It is this capacity for constant change that must be appropriated by the company, interpreting or creating the circumstances that may alter the perception of value. In the context of this work, and although there are multiple concepts and approaches to defne Competitive Advantage, we follow Peteraf & Barney in 20 their proposal that Competitive Advantage is not restricted to the best competitor in a given market, but rather to all those who, in this market, create more value than the competitor who operates just above the breakeven point. The aim of this paper is to identify the efects on competitiveness of the phenomenon of voluntary submission of companies to an institutionalized system of international arbitration, in order to verify how Competitive Advantage can be viewed and how it can infuence the adoption of organizational strategies in the search for a competitive positioning. Companies with a competitive advantage will then be able to exploit the asymmetry between their customers' maximum willingness to pay and the average price charged by the market, charging a marginally higher price, which will necessarily result in higher proft margins. The following questions will therefore be answered: A) In identical situations where the only variation is that the tourism company resorts to international arbitration, does this bring a real beneft to the organisations or not? B) Does the institutionalised adoption of arbitration continue to bring benefts to organisations even if at a marginally higher cost of the goods and services they make available to customers? To confrm or disprove the existence of a Competitive Advantage for tourism businesses that adhere, in their commercial relations, to an institutionalised arbitration system, especially in cases where the commercial relations are international and confront diferent legal systems, primary data was collected, at source and by questionnaire, both regarding tourism supply and demand, in order to relate them and increase the explanatory power of the results obtained, which involved the use of a statistical technique for data analysis. 4. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS Data collection for the study was carried out by applying questionnaire surveys to senior managers of tour operators, travel agencies and 4 and 5-star hotels in the Algarve region, as well as customers/tourists. As far as possible, we sought to interview operators, agencies and tourists with and without experience of tourism-related disputes. The questionnaire was chosen due to its objectivity and the ability to obtain structured answers. Three questionnaires were applied, one to tourists, another to tourist agencies and operators, and yet another to 4 and 5-star hotels in the Algarve. Peteraf & Barney, 2003, pag. 309-323. 20 16
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