Abstract: Innovation has been identified as one of the key vehicles of organizations’ competitiveness. Many organizations have been forced by difficult business environment to consider at least an aspect of innovation in their processes in order to stay afloat. Tea is one of the major foreign exchange earners and the Tea subsector supports 10 % of the Kenyan population. Tea is a scheduled cash crop in Kenya that is a source of livelihood to many. Innovation in the tea industry in the form of mechanical tea harvesting technology has been introduced as a comparatively cheaper option to mitigate the high labour cost that is threatening the viability of the subsector. The confounding thing however is that the uptake of this technology is still low. This study therefore sought to uncover the contradiction by establishing if perceived customer stakeholder pressure influence innovation, specifically, the adoption of mechanical tea harvesting technology. The study employed diagnostic survey research design as the most appropriate since the research was about relationship between variables. The target population was all tea plantation firms in Kenya with the respondents being the managers in charge of the business units. A census enquiry was used and data collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. The response rate was 71%. A descriptive and inferential statistics data analysis was used with a logit model indicating a beta coefficient of 2.034 with a p value of 0.003 meaning that perceived customer pressure was positively significant. Nagelkerke R square was 0.465 also indicating that it was a fairly good predictive model. The findings suggest that customers are an important stakeholder group in firm’s innovation decisions in the tea subsector in Kenya.
Keywords: Innovation, perceived customer pressure, Technology, Adoption, Mechanical tea harvesting.
Title: Customer Influence on Innovation in the Tea Subsector in Kenya
Author: Misoi, M. K
International Journal of Management and Commerce Innovations
ISSN 2348-7585 (Online)
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