Product Innovation and Its Effects on Sustainable Competitive Advantage among 10 Selected Manufacturing Firms in Ibadan Metropolis, Nigeria

Abstract

The area of product innovation and competitive advantage among manufacturing firms is drawing the attention of scholars, as manufacturing firms also crave for sustainable competitive advantage but they are oblivious of the dots that are needed to be connected in order to ensure competitive edge over their competition. Many Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FCMG) firms strive to thrive and remain relevant in the market and a major driver for survival and competitiveness is the ability to consistently innovate and develop new products. The process of product innovation that will confer a sustainable competitive advantage on manufacturing firm is quite complex, time-consuming, capital-intensive, and resource intensive, especially at the design stage. This places a heavy burden on the manufacturing firm who are willing but not able to commit the requisite resources needed to develop such products. In line with these challenges, the large-scale industries easily exploit such opportunities, as they are more equipped with the technology, technical know-how, expertise, capital etc. It is against this background there is a need for a study like this to look at the issues that could be posing threats to the sustenance of manufacturing firm's competitive advantage. Primary method of data collection was used to gathered relevant information from the field, using structured questionnaire for data collection, the research design is descriptive in nature, 330 questionnaires were distributed across the 10 selected manufacturing firms, however, 256 were returned which constitute about 78% of the total administered questionnaires while the data was analyzed using 20.0 version of SPSS. Two hypotheses were postulated and the results derived shows that there is a linear relationship between the variables used to measure the two constructs which invariably mean that manufacturing firms in Ibadan metropolis uses Product Innovation as a strategy to gain a competitive edge in the market hence the two null hypotheses were rejected. Consequently, it was concluded in this study that product innovation has a positive effect on the sustainable competitive advantage of manufacturing firms. However, it was recommended that product Innovation deserves a greater attention and more commitment from manufacturing organizations so as to guarantees other benefits other than just Sustainable Competitive Advantage. This will offer an opportunity to the manufacturing industry and their respective players to know the necessary corrective measure that is vital in ensuring sustainable competitive advantage.