Driving Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Mobile Industry: Evidence from U.S. Wireless Carriers

In light of the growing importance of data network quality in the wireless industry, this study analyzes and compares efficiencies in management, service quality, network quality, and market in the 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless industry. For this purpose, a bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) model using representative U.S. wireless carriers as decision making units (DMUs) was designed and conducted, with further verification through the Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxon W test, to examine the differences in efficiency distribution. The results indicate that, in terms of efficiency distribution, network quality efficiency and market efficiency belongs to the same group as that which has high management efficiency. Based on these results, this paper suggests implications and strategic guidelines for wireless carriers for improvement in management efficiency.