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Critical to the sustainability and continuous success of every organization is the performance concept. Hence, the cardinal goal of every organization is to achieve sustainable progressive performance for their organization. Several factors have been found to contribute to the performance of an organization. While empirical evidence indicated that innovativeness is one of the major determinants of organizational performance, many fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) were slow in their demonstration of innovative capability and it has been noted that the performance of these companies has not been impressive possibly due to the slow pace of innovativeness in the industry. This study thus investigated the effect of innovative strategies on the growth of selected FMCG firms in Lagos state, Nigeria. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population comprised 1,337 top and middle level management staff of four notable players in the FMCG industry in the state (Honeywell flower mills Plc, Dangote flower mills, Unilever Nigeria Plc, and Cadbury Nigeria Plc). Through proportionate stratified random sampling technique, 400 out of 1,337 were sampled for the study. Four hundred copies of a validated questionnaire with Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient ranging from 0.731 to 0.956 were administered to the sample with a response rate of 84.25%. Data were analyzed using both descriptive, as well as inferential statistics. Finding revealed that innovative strategies had a significant effect on growth of FMCG firms in Lagos state, Nigeria (R2 = 0.724, β = 0.887, t = 29.663, P ≤ 0.05). The study recommends that FMCG firms management need to initiate policies that will enhance innovativeness possibly through creation and proper funding of the research and development department to effectively drive growth of FMCG firms.

Dollarization has been perceived in literature as a strategy that could help emerging and developing economics achieve price stability via lower inflation rates occasioned by the adoption of a stronger currency. Supporters of dollarization also infer that the strategy has the ability to affect positively real economic variables such as growth and employment through its ability to lower interest rates, increase investment and eliminate currency risk thereby increasing international trade. In this study, we examined the effect of dollarization on selected macroeconomic variables in Nigeria from 1972 to 2017. Using simple regression models, we analysed the impact of real dollarization index on prime lending rates, inflation, unemployment, PCI, FDI, real GDP growth and total trade in Nigeria. Empirical results revealed that dollarization did not exert significant positive effect on the selected macroeconomic variables. The study therefore recommended that government should be intentional about putting measures in place to strengthen the Nigerian naira so that economic agents will see no need to hold their wealth in or transact with a foreign currency. This will discourage dollarization in Nigeria which is perceived to be a major driver of inflation in the country.

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