Keywords

1 Introduction

In today’s competitive markets, innovation is becoming increasingly important and a necessity as an option for businesses. Every business needs innovation activities according to its position (market conditions, economic conditions and management function of the business). In businesses, those who need or feel the need are managers in a decision-making position. The tendency of managers to innovate is influenced by many factors. Competitors and market conditions for businesses in the position of followers in the market are often the driving forces of innovation. However, for the businesses in the leading position in the market, the leading element of innovation is to maintain market leadership through brand value and image. In addition, the negative view of the manager can be the biggest obstacle to innovativeness, while the fact that an executive believes that innovation activities will benefit the enterprise brings with it the effective application of innovation.

While some managers see innovation as a very complex process, some managers see it as an opportunity to get out of the crisis. In this study, the purpose of measuring the business managers’ innovation perceptions is to determine what meaning the managers who determine the road maps of the businesses get from innovation and whether the business managers have the awareness of innovation. Because it is a myopia indicator to look like innovating for businesses in today’s market conditions and intensified competitive environment. Innovations made just for innovation will not go far beyond a vacancy for the business and will damage the plans of the business for the future. For this reason, it is very important for managers to look at innovation activities. This also applies to tourism businesses operating in the service sector.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of managers’ innovation perceptions on innovation activities and innovation strategies in tourism businesses. In this context, innovation, innovation strategies and innovation perceptions of tourism business managers are discussed in the literature. In the method section, the researcher’s universe and sample, data collection tools, data collection process are expressed. In the findings, the information that emerged as a result of the data analysis is given. Finally, the results of the research were explained and suggestions were made for researchers and practitioners.

2 Conceptual Framework

2.1 Innovation and Types of Innovation

Today, many businesses are turning to innovation activities in order to decrease their costs, to increase product variety by developing new products and services, and to increase the quality of products and services. In this direction, many businesses incur significant costs for innovation and also take risks that the benefits and disadvantages for the enterprise can not be fully calculated. Innovation is the most important premise of the information. Innovation in this sense; business managers should be considered as a natural process to take these risks because they need to change, take risks, and more importantly, get out of the ordinary (Demirel and Seçkin 2008). The path to success in this process is sometimes possible with radical innovations (discontinuous or revolutionary), sometimes with gradual (continuous or evolutionary) transitions (Özen and Bingöl 2007).

Drucker (1985) described innovation as useful information that allowed people with different knowledge and experience working in an enterprise to make them productive and effective for the first time, as there is no consensus about what innovation actually means for businesses and the limitations of the concept. Kuczmarski (1996) stated that innovation is a widespread attitude that allows the company to see the future when it is in business and to form the vision for the future. Wulfen (2014) stated that innovation is a kind of idea production, but that ideas can only be transformed into new ones by planned actions that must be realized in five stages. These steps; the aim of continuous progress, observation and motivation of the learning feeling, the production of the idea and the testing of the idea, the passing of the intellectuals produced as a result of the test. According to Johansson (2013), ideas that cannot pass the test phase can not be accepted as innovation, and acceptance of the idea of innovation is only possible with the acceptance of the target.

Today, every element that is a source of innovation, such as the preparation of working environments in businesses and the promotion of managerial and structural mechanisms to support it and the innovative skills of employees are being actively used (Yahyagil 2001). Another thing to consider here is the compatibility with your operating resources and capabilities. In this context, the content of innovative actions that can be undertaken for businesses and the types of appropriate innovations should be carefully analyzed. Innovation in businesses can be realized in a wide range of products and services ranging from production to after-sale services. In this sense, areas where innovation can be made for businesses, in other words, types of innovation can be expressed under four headings. These are product and service innovation, process innovation, organizational innovation and marketing innovation. Product or service innovation benefits its users in the end product’s technical specifications, components, materials, integrated software offered to customers (Yavuz 2010; Esen and Çetin 2012; Kucharska 2014).

Process innovation is a structure in which inputs and outputs are determined for action and innovation activities to be performed with a starting point and a result point determined. Process innovation is intended to be used in the most beneficial way by the variables that can be controlled by the targeted business (Davenport 2013). Organizational innovation includes efforts to improve the performance of the business by reducing the management costs and transaction costs of the business (Guloglu and Tekin 2012; Karakaş et al. 2017). In addition, organizational innovation means not only business operations but also changes in the way business operates in the external relationship of the business. Finally, marketing innovation involves the businesses’ knowledge of the desires and expectations of the target consumer group and the different and unique practices that compete with those demands and expectations (Chen 2006).

2.2 Innovation Strategies

The innovation strategies that can be applied in the businesses are shaped according to the viewpoints of the managers. Miles and Snow (2003) have identified four types of strategies through which the representation of alternative ways of movement of organizations through the adaptive loop is shown. These are aggressive strategy, defensive strategy, imitative strategy and reactive strategy. This movement structure, as revealed by Miles and Snow (2003), also applies to innovation strategies of businesses. The aggressive strategy is to present a product or service before its competitors and to obtain market leadership by patenting a new product or service that is not on the market. Aggressive strategy is used to take advantage of being in front of competitors in the market where the product and service are new. But in order to be able to use aggressive strategy, it is necessary to have very strong R&D (Research and Development) activities. With the aggressive innovation strategy, businesses move more quickly to allocate their resources and assets to strengthen their position. Thus, they gain the advantage of being first in the market with their new products and services (Akman and Yılmaz 2008).

Defensive strategy is a kind of cautious strategy. It is being used by businesses that set out innovations that need to be made in the future, followed by businesses that have implemented these innovations, and are moving toward innovation strategies to balance their own economy by analyzing (Thoenig and Verdier 2003). Businesses that embrace this strategy strive to maintain and control stability to protect the current market they are focusing on (Luke and Begun 1988; Żelazny and Pietrucha 2017). In this direction, instead of producing a new product directly in the defensive innovation strategy, it is moving through the produced product and the created market. The purpose of the imitator strategy is to work with low workforce, less material and investment. It is a strategy that avoids high R&D costs. Earnings from avoiding businesses are also low. The imitator strategy has two important points. The first of these is getting healthy information about the change in the market. In order to be able to identify the product or service to be adapted, it is necessary to know which product or service the market is interested in. The second point is the selection of the innovation to be imitated and the establishment of the businesses to receive the know-how (Deniz 2008; Mitra and Jha 2015). Dependent innovation strategy is usually implemented in small and capital intensive businesses that are not very involved in product design, service delivery, research and development work. These businesses can achieve sufficient profit rates due to low general and administrative costs, enterprise capabilities, specialized knowledge and special local advantages (Mohnen and Hall 2013; Ebrahimi and Mirbargkar 2017).

2.3 Perceptions of Innovation in Managers, Innovative Actions and Innovation Strategies

Due to the multifaceted nature of the tourism industry, complex structure and rapidly changing structure, managers in the sector need to have different, innovative and superior qualities (Ebrahimi and Mirbargkar 2017; Świadek 2015). Perception is the interpretation and interpretation of data obtained through the sense organs possessed. These interpretations reveal the meanings of the people they have installed in their actions in their surroundings. Therefore, perceptions of business managers’ innovation activities and innovation strategies have a bearing on the benefits or harms to business will lead their attitudes towards these actions. Tourism business managers who think that innovation activities will cost to operate will try to avoid these actions as much as possible. In these business managers’ strategic decisions, the adoption of reactionary and defensive strategies seems to be a natural process. The managers of tourism businesses that believe in innovation activity and the competitiveness and profitability of the enterprise are profit-oriented bosses instead of cost orientation to innovation activities. It is likely that these managers will set their business strategies as aggressors or impostors.

3 Methodology

The purpose of this research is to examine the influence of managers’ innovation perceptions on innovation activities and innovation strategies in hotel businesses. In addition, the relationship between types of innovation and innovation strategies in hotel businesses in the research has been analyzed. Figure 1 shows the research model explaining the relationship between the variables of the research.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Research model

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Research hypotheses formed in this direction are as follows:

  • H1: Hotel managers’ perceptions of innovation are influential on innovation activities in businesses.

  • H2: Innovation perceptions of hotel managers are influential on innovation strategies in business.

  • H3: There is a correlation between types of innovation and innovation strategies in hotel business.

The universe of this research is composed of 125 hotel management businesses operating in the provinces of Zonguldak, Bartın and Karabük, which are located in the Western Black Sea region of Turkey, with tourism operation certificate and municipal certificate. Full census sampling was conducted in the survey and all businesses involved in the survey were included in the survey. Survey data were obtained using questionnaire technique. In the creation of the research questionnaire, questions about innovation activities and strategies were adapted from Taşgit and Torun (2016). In addition, 36 statements have been added to measure the manager’s view of innovation. The scale was used in the five-point Likert type scale (1 = never agree, 5 = strongly agree). The survey data were obtained through face-to-face surveys applied to business managers between 20-01-2017 and 17-05-2017. At the end of the data collection period, data related to the survey were obtained from 82 hotel management directors. The reliability of the research scale is α = 0.88.

4 Findings

4.1 Demographic Findings

Twenty-two percent (18 people) of the participants were female, 78% (64 people) were male. 69.5% (57 people) were married and 30.5% (25 people) were single. 50% of the participants (41 people) are between the ages of 31–40, 39% (32 people) are between the ages of 41–50 and 8.5% (7 people) are between the ages of 20–30. There are one person between the ages of 51–60 and over 60 years old. When the educational status of the participants is examined; 59.8% (49 people) are university graduates, 20.3% (24 people) are high school graduates, 8.5% (7 persons) are secondary school graduates and 2.4% (2 persons) are primary school graduates. While 57.3% (47 people) of the participants did not receive tourism education, 42.7% (35 people) received tourism education. When the managers’ working time in the sector participating in the survey are evaluated; 37.8% (31 people), 11–15 years, 29.3% (24 people), 6–10 years, 14.6% (12 people), 16–20 years, 9.8% (8 people) 1–5 years and 8.5% (7 people) have 20 or more years of sector experience.

4.2 Findings Related to Innovation Perceptions of Managers

The innovation perceptions of managers are measured through 12 questions. The reliability level of the scale is 86. Table 1 shows the frequency values of responses given by tourism managers to innovation perceptions.

Table 1 Frequency values related to innovation perceptions of managers
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When managers’ perceptions of innovation are examined; it is seen that managers perceive innovation as an opportunity for exit from crisis periods with 47.6% participation level. Though managers see innovation as a critical element to creating a competitive advantage (partly agree = 45.1%), the fact that the full participation rate is 0% indicates that managers are pessimistic about this issue. Managers perceive innovation as a difficult (53.7%) and uncertain process of governance (43.9%). Findings show that managers perceive innovations as activities that create additional costs for the enterprise (45.1%), require radical changes (43.9%), and are likely to be encountered by customers (42.7%) and business personnel (40.2%) and contribute to increasing product quality (45.1%).

4.3 Findings of Innovation Types and Innovation Strategies in Businesses

Following the managers’ perceptions of innovation, the types of innovation realized in businesses and the data on innovation strategies are examined. Table 2 shows the types of innovations carried out in the hotel businesses operating in the Western Black Sea region and the frequency values of the innovation strategies adopted by the businesses.

Table 2 Types of innovation and innovation strategies in tourism businesses
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When the findings are examined, it is noteworthy that the service innovation of the hotel types is 4.02 average level. This innovation is followed by product innovation with an average of 3.77. The type of innovation that has the least application in hotel operations in the Western Black Sea Region is organizational innovation with an average of 3.13. When the innovation strategy adopted by the business is examined, it is seen that the innovation strategy generally adopted by the businesses is the defensive strategy. This strategy follows an imitative strategy with an average of 3.11. The innovation strategy that is least adopted by the business is a reactionary strategy with an average of 2.06.

4.4 Relationship Between Innovation Perception and Types of Innovation

Correlation analysis was applied to the data obtained in order to determine whether there is a relationship between the innovation perceptions of the managers of hotels operating in the Western Black Sea Region and the types of innovation realized in the businesses. Table 3 shows the results of the correlation analysis.

Table 3 Results of correlation analysis between innovation perception and innovation types
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When the relationship between hotel managers’ innovation perceptions and the type of innovation implemented in the business they work in is reached: it has been determined that service innovation and process innovation from innovation types are a weak and positive correlation between managers’ perceptions of exit from crisis and perceptions of competitive advantage. In addition, there is a positive relationship between managers’ uncertainty perceptions and process innovations and marketing innovation practices. Finally, it is seen that managers have a meaningful and positive relationship (at 0.05 level) between customer resistance perceptions and product innovation practices.

4.5 Relationship Between Innovation Perception and Innovation Strategies

Correlation analysis was applied to the data obtained in order to determine whether there is a relationship between managers’ innovation perceptions and innovation strategies applied in businesses in hotel businesses. Table 4 shows the results of the managers’ analysis of the correlation between innovation perceptions and innovative strategies.

Table 4 Results of correlation analysis between innovation perception and innovation strategies
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As a result of the analysis to determine the relation of managers’ innovation perceptions with the innovation strategies applied in the businesses, it was determined that there was a negative correlation between the managers’ positional risk of innovation perceptions and aggressive strategy and imitator strategy at 0.05 level. Other findings on the analysis show that there is no meaningful relationship between managers’ innovation perceptions and innovative strategies of businesses.

4.6 The Relationship Between Innovation Types and Innovation Strategies

The research also analyzed the relationship between innovation types applied in hotel businesses and innovation strategies. Table 5 shows the results obtained from the correlation analysis.

Table 5 Results of correlation analysis of innovation types and innovation strategies in tourism businesses
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When examining the relationship between types of innovation and innovation strategies in hotel businesses; a significant and moderately positive relationship was found between service innovation and imitator strategy at 0.01 level. In addition, low and positive at 0.01 significance level between marketing innovation and defense strategy; organizational innovation and aggressive strategy are low and positive at a level of 0.05 significance; a moderate and positive relationship was found at 0.01 significance level between organizational innovation and imitative strategy and responsive strategy. As a result of the analysis, it is also determined that there is no meaningful relationship between product innovation and process innovation and innovation strategies. H3 hypothesis was accepted in the obtained findings direction.

4.7 The Impact of Innovation Perception on Innovation Types

Regression analysis was applied to the data obtained in order to examine the effect of managers’ innovation perception on the types of innovation realized in hotel businesses. In regression analysis, managers’ innovation perceptions are independent and hotel innovations are considered dependent variables. The effect of independent variables on dependent variables has been tested sequentially. Table 6 shows the results of multiple regression analysis.

Table 6 Results of multiple regression analysis
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As a result of the analysis, it was determined that managers’ affected product innovation from the innovation types of innovation perceptions at 0.231 level. When the levels of significance were examined, it was seen that the managers’ significantly affected the perceptions of change and the customer resistance perceptions significantly (sig. <0.05, <0.10 respectively). Other managerial innovation perceptions were found to have no significant effect on product innovation (sig. > 0.05). Managers’ perceptions of innovation have been found to have a significant effect (Sig. 0.02) on the service innovation of the position risk. When managers’ perceptions of innovations on process innovations in businesses are examined, managers’ innovation perceptions have a significant effect on process innovation at 0.184 level. When the influence of innovation perceptions on process innovation is examined, the uncertainty sense and the cadence perception influence the positive direction, while the fundamental change affects the negative direction. This result is statistically significant (Sig.: 0.44; 0.33; 0.11). Uncertainty perception with a rate of 27.9%, deep root change perception with a rate of 30.1% and quality increase perception with a rate of 31.8% affect process innovation. When the influence of managers’ innovation perceptions on marketing innovation was examined, it was seen that the level of significance for all the variables that constitute managers’ innovation perceptions is higher than 0.05. That is, managers’ perceptions of innovation have meaningful effect on marketing innovation in business at 10% significance level. Finally, when managers’ influence of innovation perceptions on organizational innovation was examined, it was determined that the position risk variable had significant (sig. 0.03) effect on organizational innovation at 0.295 level. In this context, the alternative hypothesis was rejected and the H1 hypothesis was accepted.

4.8 Effect of Innovation Perception on Innovation Strategies

In the research, the impact of innovations of hotel management on innovation strategies of businesses was analyzed. The results of the multiple regression analysis carried out in this context are shown in Table 7.

Table 7 Effect of innovation perception on innovation strategies
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When the results of the multiple regression analysis are analyzed, it was determined that the innovation perceptions of hotel managers have meaningful effect (sig. < 0.10) on the aggressive strategy, counterfeit strategy and responsive strategy from the innovation strategies applied in the businesses at 10% significance level. On the other hand, managers’ perception of position risk has a significant effect (sig. 0.03) on the defensive strategy. The direction of this effect is negative (−0.284). In other words, as managers’ perceptions of position risk increased, defensive strategy implementation levels decreased by 28%. The alternative hypothesis was rejected in the obtained findings and the H2 hypothesis was accepted.

5 Conclusions and Recommendations

This research was conducted in order to investigate the effects of hotel managers’ innovation perceptions on innovation types and innovation strategies in the businesses. It was conducted in 125 hotels operating in Zonguldak, Bartın and Karabük. The research first explored perceptions of business managers regarding innovation activities. As a result of the review, it has been determined that business managers’ perception of innovation activities is a difficult process to manage, that innovation activities are activities that provide competitive advantage to the enterprise, and that innovation activities will incur additional costs to operate. The most positive perception of managers’ innovation activities is that innovation activities will enhance the quality of products and services offered in businesses.

Later, the innovation activities and innovation strategies applied by the business managers in their businesses were examined. As a result of the review, it was determined that the most applied innovation category in the businesses is service innovation and this innovation is followed by product innovation. It has been determined that organizational innovation from the types of innovation applied in the businesses is the type of innovation applied at least in the level. When the innovation strategies applied by the hotel businesses are examined, it is determined that the most applied strategy by the businesses is the defensive strategy and the least adopted strategy is the reactive strategy. When the relationships between the variables of the research were analyzed, it was determined that there was a meaningful relation between managers’ exit from the crisis, uncertainty, competitive advantage and customer resistance perceptions and innovation types. In addition, managers have determined that there is no significant relationship between innovation perceptions and innovation strategies in dimensions other than position risk dimension. In addition, it has been determined that there is a significant relationship between innovations applied in businesses and innovation strategies. Finally, business managers’ perceptions of innovation have been found to have a significant effect on innovation practices beyond marketing innovation. However, managers’ perceptions of innovation have not been found to have any significant effect on the innovation strategies applied in businesses.

It can be said that effective and on-site innovations play an important role in enhancing the competitiveness of the operator, which is a huge effect of the differentiation of innovations. Differentiation can be achieved through the employment of qualified and trained personnel, the management of the enterprise through an innovative management style, the continuous innovation in food, beverages and services, the creation of tight coordination among departments, the creation of innovation climate in the enterprise and the attempt to create an enterprise identity (Çakıcı et al. 2016).

Searches of tourism sector has focused on issues such as increasing customer demand, customer satisfaction, improving the quality of services and improving satisfaction of staffs. Result of this focus, innovation has become a necessity for businesses. Even in terms of the global economy, enterprises have the obligation to do innovative applications (Vatan and Zengin 2014).

This research is based on the influence of hotel managers’ innovation perceptions on innovation types and innovation strategies applied in businesses. The research to be done can focus on the types of innovation applied in hotel business and other factors affecting innovation strategies. In addition, the impact of managers’ innovation perceptions on innovation types and innovation strategies can be explored in the sub-sectors that comprise the tourism industry.