Exploring the impact of a company’s web technological development on its innovation activity: a case study of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in North Wales

Abstract

This research is to explore the impacts of a company's web technological development on its innovation activity and to estimate the probabilistic impact of technology on levels of innovation, which consist of marketing mix, environmental and organisational innovation. This research was implemented in North Wales, UK using a relatively small purposive sample (n = 68) of SMEs as a case study. A mixed-method analysis was employed combining phenomenology and positivism. The phenomenological aspect was implemented by analysing respondent interview texts using Content Analysis. Positivist research was applied to the survey questionnaires by applying correlation and a Logit analyses. The findings indicate an increase in company Web technological development corresponding to an increase in company innovation activity. Although, it seems consistent with the relevant literature, however, technology did not create environmental innovation but merely created new marketing-mix innovation such as product, price, promotion and process innovation. Due to the nature of the purposive sampling technique employed, this case study carries limitations. A purposive sampling technique is known as non-probabilistic sampling technique in the literature. The aim is not to randomly select samples from the SMEs population with the intention of making generalisations, but to serve as an initial empirical exploration as a case study to guide further research with a larger sample size. This study carries originality in relation to the methodology, which can be replicated with larger samples. Using 123Glob Bus Perspect (2013) 1: 488-514 DOI 10.1007/s40196-013-0023-6 actual values, the findings of Logit model can also be used to directly calculate the impact of technological levels on SMEs' innovation activity.