Marketing Innovation and SMEs’ Business Performance in Malaysia

Abstract

In today's global and high technological environment, innovation is a crucial factor that helps Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to sustain in their business. Innovation will cause SMEs to gain creativity, success, profitability, and customer satisfaction, and all those elements will contribute to enhancing SMEs' business performance. There are a few types of innovation that SMEs can implement, one of them is marketing innovation. Marketing innovation is new or improved marketing method that can be used by the firm involving significant changes in product design or packaging, product placement, product promotion and pricing. This research aims to identify the relationship between marketing innovation and SMEs' business performance in the retail industry in Malaysia. A quantitative survey has been distributed to retail SMEs, and 217 completed responses were obtained for the analysis. The researchers conducted multiple regression analyses to test the relationship of marketing innovation towards SMEs' business performance. Based on the finding, there is a significant relationship between marketing innovation and SMEs' business performance. Marketing innovation is substantial for SMEs' business performance; therefore, SMEs need to invest in marketing innovation to ensure their business performance. The result also suggests the need for future research to investigate the relationship in different areas.
Keyword: Innovation, Marketing Innovation, Business Performance