Marketing Innovation and the Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises in Oyo Township, Nigeria

The performance of SMEs has continued to generate immense research attention among scholars and researchers in the extant literature. Many factors have been investigated in SME performance but there remain some literature gaps. Based on this premise, the present study examined the direct influence of marketing innovation on SME performance and also investigated the mediating role of research & development in the relationship between marketing innovation and SME performance. The study adopted a survey research design and data. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 175 small-medium enterprises in Oyo township using a convenient sampling technique. Two hypotheses were tested with the IBM-SPSS version 25. The study found that there is a positive relationship between perceived product innovation and perceived performance. The study found that perceived collaboration innovation exhibited a positive relationship with perceived performance. The study found that perceived distribution channel innovation also showed a positive association with perceived performance. The study found that there was a joint influence of (product innovation, digital marketing technologies, collaboration innovation, and distribution channel innovation) on perceived performance. The study found that research & development mediated the relationship between perceived workload and life satisfaction. The study concluded that marketing innovation influences SMEs' performance and research & development also mediated the link between marketing innovation and SMEs performance.