Strategic marketing innovation and sustainable competitive Advantage of SMES in Northwest Nigeria: mediating role of Risk taking

Abstract

Firms struggle to sustain competitive advantage, and the evidence on how marketing innovation becomes advantage is fragmented, especially for resource-constrained SMEs. The main objective of this study is to examine the effect of strategic marketing innovation (SMI) and sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) of SMEs in Northwest Nigeria: The roles of risk taking. The study adopted a quantitative research design as data were collected at a single point in time. The population of the study consists of the entire 137,648 registered SMEs in Northwest Nigeria. A sample size of 399 SMEs was used to represent the entire population, through Yamane (1973) formula. The results suggest that only two measures of strategic marketing innovation (i.e. product innovation, price innovation) have a positive significant relationship with SMEs’ sustainable competitive advantage in Northwestern Nigeria, while distribution innovation and artificial intelligent innovation shows insignificant effect on SMEs’ sustainable competitive advantage. Risk taking is revealed to also have a positive significant effect on firms’ sustainable competitive advantage. Meanwhile, the study shows that risk taking is the fundamental reason why strategic marketing innovation (i.e. product innovation) have influence on firms’ sustainable competitive advantage in Northwestern Nigeria. Therefore, it is recommended that the owners/managers of SMEs need to focus on conducting regular risk assessment so as to continue identify potential vulnerabilities of innovative product and addressing customer needs and preferences while reviewing and implementing their innovative distribution channels.