Innovation in Small and Medium-Sized Agricultural and Food Processing Industries in Mazandaran Province during the Covid-19 Epidemic

Covid-19 virus pandemic has seriously threatened the survival of the small and medium-sized businesses. So that they have used various approaches to overcome it. Small and medium-sized businesses in the agricultural and food processing industries were not exempt from the rule. Present study seeks to firstly study the innovation and innovation capability status among these businesses and then, to explain product and marketing innovation changes based on the innovation capability, process innovation and organizational innovation during the the covid-19 epidemic.

The current study is a type of descriptive-correlational research, which was carried out using the field survey technique among 500 small and medium-sized agricultural and food processing industries in Mazandaran province. Using Krejcie and Morgan’s table and also completely random sampling  217 businesses were selected as the study sample. The research instrument was a structured questionnaire in the form of a five-option Likert scale, the questions of which were adapted and extracted from two studies by Gondi et al. in 2011 and Jayani Rajapathirana in 2018. The respondents were business owners that data collection has been done through e-mail and also by questioning with them.

Businesses used marketing innovations to a good extent and also used organizational, process and product innovations to an average extent. "Using new techniques or media to advertise products", "Distributing responsibilities and using a collaborative approach in decision-making","Transformation in manufacturing and production processes" and "Increasing the quality of manufactured products through the use of quality raw materials" were identified and introduced as the most important marketing, organizational, process and product innovations. Process innovation, organizational innovation and innovation capability could explain 62% of product innovation changes and 27% of market innovation changes. Organizational innovation was introduced as the most important variable affecting market innovation. Innovation capability was introduced as the most important variable affecting product innovation.

The businesses have taken various innovative measures in the shapes of marketing, product, process and organizational to survive and grow during the Covid-19 epidemic. In the meantime, they have used marketing innovations to a good extent and product, process and organizational innovations to an average extent. Based on the results of this study, small and medium-sized businesses should rely on product and marketing innovations to survive and grow during Covid-19 epidemic and similar conditions. The main prerequisite to develop product innovation in small and medium-sized industries is to improve the innovation capability among them, and the main prerequisite to develop marketing innovation among small and medium-sized industries is to improve the level of organizational innovation among them. The experiences from the present study can be a valuable guide for policymakers, practitioners and business owners to provide the infrastructure and preparations as a passive defense to face possible similar crises.