Marketing Innovation, Innovation And Competitive Advantage?

INTRODUCTION

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD (2005) explains marketing innovation as the implementation of a new marketing method involving significant changes in product design or packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing. Innovation can be making changes to existing or introducing something new that adds value to consumers. The objective is for companies to gain superiority/ competitive advantages through innovation.

Competitive advantage can be described as a business concept outlining attributes that allow an organisation to outperform its competitors. Porter (1990) sates that companies achieve competitive advantage through acts of innovation; both new technologies and new ways of doing

Therefore it was necessary to analyse the need for innovation, identify types of innovations, give documented examples, and discuss the importance that each type play in developing an organisation’s strategic competitive advantage. Various literature have been reviewed for this purpose.

It is the notion that service innovation helps companies to provide consumers with superior service to competitors as suggested by Hogan et al. (2011), and it is critical to greater performance and competitive advantage.

In the fashion industry, styles that appeared on the catwalk is usually seen in magazines by the common man and is only available for purchase when the season starts. However with the rise of fashion consumerism, Burberry saw the need to innovate; offering fashion direct from the catwalk to the common man. With a mix of e-commerce and social media strategies, Burberry enables shoppers to live stream catwalk shows and order direct. In 2013 The New York Times reported that the audience was potentially more than 19.3 million across all digital platforms and Burberry Plc reported revenue of £1,857million – a 23% increase making them one of the leading luxury fashion retailers.