The impact of service innovation on firm performance

Innovativeness and business performances in tourism SMEs

“…Lastly, studies also abound on the importance of organizational factors such as level of decentralization, work groups, hierarchy, strategic orientation, or quality standards on firms' innovativeness (Table 1). Thus, evidence exists supporting the relation of innovation with strategic orientation (Rodgers, 2007;Volo, 2006), quality (Lin, 2013) and productivity in tourism firms (Blake et al, 2006).…”

“…In addition, firms' profitability was also evaluated by interviewees using an ordinal scale (0 = losses, 4 = high profitability), a procedure widely followed in the literature (Ar & Baki, 2011;Calantone, Cavusgil, & Zhao, 2002;Deshpandé et al, 1993;Hernández-Espallardo, Sánchez-Pérez, & Segovia-López, 2011;Jiménez-Jiménez & Sanz-Valle, 2011). Thus, subjective measurement has been used frequently in empirical research on services (Lin, 2013), given the limitations of measurements of financial performance using financial statements (Nicolau & Santa-María, 2013), the reluctance of tourism firms to provide objective financial data (Lin, 2013) and, additionally, the significantly positive correlation between objective and subjective measurements of firm's performance, as observed in Dess and …”

“…In our case, we have opted for economic profitability because it is an indicator of financial performance. Earlier firm level research has used this variable as a measurement of tourism firms' economic performance (Jacob et al, 2003;Lin, 2013;Volo, 2006), demonstrating on occasions a strong relationship between innovation and profitability in these organizations (Martínez-Ros & Orfila-Sintes, 2012).…”

“…The elaboration of this primary source was necessary given the bias and limitations of secondary data for the analysis of innovative behavior and its performance in tourism firms (Camisón & Montfort-Mir, 2012;Hjalager, 2002;Križaj et al, 2014;Lin, 2013). The population consists of tourism firms in Andalusia in the size range selected, some 600 firms.…”

“…However, despite the growing interest in empirical research on innovation, no model has been developed for the innovative behavior of firms in tourism. Given the noteworthy differences in innovations in services (Drejer, 2004;Martínez-Ros & Orfila-Sintes, 2012) and specifically in tourism (Hjalager, 2010;Križaj, Brodnik, & Bukovec, 2014;Volo, 2006), the literature pinpoints the need for a specific study on innovative behavior (Camisón & Montfort-Mir, 2012) and its economic outcomes in tourism firms (Lin, 2013). Understanding of innovation patterns in these firms is fundamental to developing an innovation policy that contributes in greater measure to increasing productivity (Blake, Sinclair, & Campos-Soria, 2006), profitability (Martínez-Ros & Orfila-Sintes, 2012) and competitiveness in firms and tourist destinations (Camisón & Montfort-Mir, 2012).…”