Retail trade has become increasingly competitive and hardware stores are no exception. This is a very important sales channel for the economy of a country, since it moves many national and international companies, as well as complementary service providers. The hardware centers in Mexico are growing rapidly and setting in places with great potential of development. For each opening of a hardware store, local hardware stores lose 50% of their sales. The objective of this paper was to measure the effect of each of the elements of the marketing mix on local hardware competitiveness in the municipality of Nextlalpan. The methodology consisted in the estimation of multiple regression models with data obtained from a survey applied to hardware administrators in Nextlalpan, Mexico. It was reported that the elasticity lower than 1 shows that there is strong competition between local hardware stores in the municipality of nextlalpan. This means that each of the elements of the marketing mix has a weak impact on sales. It was found that the assortment and specialization of products; the low, adequate and strategic prices; the good location and the friendly treatment in the store; advertising and promotions, influenced in a positive and inelastic way in the competitiveness of local hardware stores. However, the right prices (0.589), the advertising (0.419), the assortment of products (0.405) and the location (0.381) were the most prominent
