The Effect Of Product Innovation, And Process Innovation On Competitive Advantages And Marketing Performance Of Snack Products

Abstract

Small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) play an important role in Indonesia's economic growth by increasing income or employment opportunities. MSMEs contribute significantly to Indonesia's economic growth by creating jobs that produce goods and services that society needs. Every MSMEs must be able to survive and continue to grow, along with the increasing number of MSMEs every year with increasingly fierce competition. However, because MSMEs have a short product life cycle and are heavily influenced by consumer preferences. Innovation is one of the most effective strategies to maintain business and increase competitiveness. On the other hand, developing a new product is difficult because it is expensive and requires the product to have a competitive advantage over competing products. Making it difficult for MSMEs to do so because of limited capital. This is not only a problem for MSMEs in Indonesia, including Jember. This condition encourages the Government of Jember Regency to continue to strive to improve MSMEs through various activities or events that involve MSME business actors in snack products so they can market their products and improve their branding. This will certainly encourage the competitiveness and innovation of MSME snack product business actors, so that their products are unique and superior compared to their competitors. Therefore, MSME snack business actors need to optimize product innovation and process innovation to increase competitive advantage and marketing performance. Based on these phenomena and problems, the development of MSME food products in Sumbersari District, Kaliwates District, and Patrang District as central areas are opportunities to increase income and create jobs in the Jember Regency area. This study uses an associative research method with a questionnaire as a data collection instrument which is then distributed to MSME owners of snack products as respondents. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of product innovation and process innovation on the competitive advantage and marketing performance of MSME snack products in the Jember Regency.