Marketing communication tools and their influence on marketing innovation: Evidence from Slovakian SMEs

Due to lack of sources, SMEs face certain problems when applying innovative activities. Since marketing communication tools enable to perform innovative actions, SMEs' usage of such channels might provide solutions for them to overcome the barriers of making innovation. Thus, this paper investigates whether the usage of marketing communication tools by SMEs enables them to be innovative in marketing or not, and the research question is "Does the usage of marketing communication tools by SMEs improve their innovativeness in marketing?" This paper focuses on traditional and technology-enabled marketing communication tools, such as direct marketing, personal selling, online marketing, and advertising in social media. The researchers employ a random sampling method and then create an online internet-mediated questionnaire to collect data from 812 SMEs in Slovakia. The researchers have also performed Ordinal Logistic Regression analyses to fulfill the research aim. The results show that the usage of marketing communication tools by SMEs improves their innovative posture in marketing. The education level of firm executives and cultural factors in a specific nation might be the reasons for the findings of this research. Thus, the trainings and financial support provided by policymakers and collaboration of other institutions are beneficial for the growth of SMEs. This research analyzes traditional and technology-enabled marketing tools, and areas of marketing innovation in a broad perspective, including innovations in products/services, prices, distribution, promotion, people, processes, and visualization. Therefore, it differs from other studies and fills the research gap by making a significant value addition in related literature.