PAPER TITLE :ANALYSIS OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS AND COMPETITIONS AMONG SMALL- AND MEDIUM-SIZED FOOD AND BEVER

FUTA JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY | VOLUME 1 NUMBER 2 2016

Paper Details

  • Author(s) : A. D. Dada
  • Abstract:

Food and beverage industrial sector is one of the largest employers of labour in Nigeria. Studies have established the existence of some innovations in the industry. This paper focuses on the link between technological innovations and competitions of  food and beverage companies. Multistage sampling technique was employed to elicit information from one hundred and fifty firms in Lagos, Ogun and Oyo States, Southwestern Nigeria with a response rate of 64%. Both descriptive and appropriate inferential statistical analyses were used for the data.  Using a standard framework, results revealed the existence of five types of innovations (product, process, market, strategic and behavioural) in the firms. The companies reached a moderate level of innovation (3.20) on a 5-point Likert scale. Process innovation was found to be highest (3.45), followed by product innovation (3.21), and the lowest for market innovation (3.02). The analysis of the data further revealed a high (3.95) level of competitions among the enterprises. Product quality (4.21) and firm’s flexibility (3.82) respectively contributed the highest and lowest levels of competitions of the industry.  A Pearson correlation coefficient value of 0.55 indicated a positive correlation of medium intensity, statistically significant at the 0.01 (α = 0.44, ρ ≠ 0) confidence level (0 ≤ r ≤1).  This shows that the higher the overall innovations, the higher the level of competitions of the companies. The paper concludes that the technological innovationsin the food and beverage firms generated high competitions among the companies. Strategies should therefore be geared towards continuous expansion of innovations in the industry