Abstract: This article explores the nature of market participants’ competitiveness, providing a conceptual foundation for selecting evaluation indicators suitable for detailed analysis and effective competitive decision-making. It reviews different interpretations of competitiveness and methods to assess its level. The ambiguity in defining competitiveness attributes leads to diverse approaches in choosing evaluation criteria, often related to the results of economic activity at various functional levels.

The author conceptualizes competitiveness as an enterprise’s ability to withstand competitors’ pressure in the contest for the object of competition – consumers’ purchasing power, which transforms into sellers’ revenue when exchanged for goods or services. This interpretation aligns competitiveness with applied marketing concepts.

The study investigates the relationship between marketing and competitiveness by analyzing fundamental marketing principles and their evolution in contemporary conditions. It confirms that modern marketing technologies have not changed marketing’s core purpose: satisfying consumer needs while generating economic benefits through exchange processes. Competitive market participants uniquely demonstrate the ability to fulfill consumer needs profitably, reflecting a balance among competitiveness determinants–marketing outcomes, potential, and functionality. The balance between marketing outcomes and potential, aligned with an enterprise’s marketing goals, is regulated by adjusting marketing functional parameters.

The article proposes a set of indicators for defining these determinants and presents an algorithm for calculating realized, potential, and functional competitiveness. The study concludes that enterprise competitiveness is a complex applied result of marketing concept implementation at the institutional level, combining realized, functional, and potential components measured according to marketing outcomes, functionality, and potential.