Title: Innovation strategy and network capability as marketing innovation enablers

Authors: Bruna Cescatto Costa; Simone Regina Didonet

Addresses: School of Business Management, Universidade Federal do Paraná, 2nd Floor, Av. Lothário Meissner, 632, Jardim Botânico 80210-170, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil ' School of Business Management, Universidade Federal do Paraná, 2nd Floor, Av. Lothário Meissner, 632, Jardim Botânico 80210-170, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to verify the influence of innovation strategy and network capability on marketing innovation. Data obtained from a survey with 131 small and medium firms from the cosmetic industry in Brazil were analysed using PLS-SEM technique. The results confirmed the influence of both antecedents, i.e., innovation strategy and network capability. Furthermore, the findings showed that small and medium enterprises are more innovative in marketing than micro firms are. Besides, network capability showed slightly stronger impact in marketing innovation than innovation strategy. This can be explained by considering characteristics of the sector, which exhibits high dependence on suppliers, distributors and clients. This study contributes by adding evidences, which link the managerial perspective of innovation to marketing innovation instead of considering the usual linkages between firm performance and product innovation. Thus, firms who want to foster marketing innovation find evidence of the factors that favours marketing innovation incidence.

Keywords: marketing innovation; innovation strategy; small firms; cosmetics; network capability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIR.2020.110965

International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 2020 Vol.23 No.3, pp.370 - 383

Received: 24 Mar 2019
Accepted: 20 May 2019
Published online: 03 Nov 2020 *

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