THE INFLUENCE OF EXPORT ACTIVITY ON INNOVATIVENESS OF POLISH FURNITURE MARKET

Polish furniture industry has special potential in the scope of production and exports. This is confirmed by the unchanged for years good position of Poland in the world ranking of furniture manufacturers and exporters. Competition on the international market and current business conditions necessitate the need for constant growth of innovation activities undertaken by Polish furniture manufacturers. Therefore the purpose of this article is to determine the effect of export activity of Polish furniture enterprises on the level of their innovativeness. Empirical research was conducted among 80 medium and large enterprises operating on the Polish furniture market. The research tool was the interview questionnaire consisting of 31 questions divided into four parts: basic information about a company (I), the development and innovativeness of the company (II), the processing technology of wood based boards (III), information about a person who gave answers (IV). The study was conducted in the period from September to October 2015. During this period on the furniture market were active 462 companies, where the employment level exceeded 49 people. This means that the study involved 17% of the population. The study analyzed various aspects of the conditions of innovative activity of Polish furniture manufacturers, e.g. determinants of increasing demand for products and services, the objectives of undertaking innovative activity in the area of processes and products. In addition, the attention was paid to the factors restricting innovativeness in the surveyed companies. It should be stressed, that the comparative analysis, in which was taken into account the criterion of conducting or not the export activity, was performed too. For this purpose statistical methods, ie. cross tables and statistical package SPPS Statistics 17.0 were used. These analyses allowed for a detailed evaluation of selected aspects of innovative activity of medium and large furniture enterprises in Poland.