Exploring Configurational Paths for Creating Innovation Performance of SMEs in the Materials and Components Industry: Focusing on Logistic Regression and fsQCA Method
Yejin Jo, Hosung Son · Asia-pacific Journal of Convergent Research Interchange · 2025
The materials and components industry is the core sector underpinning the manufacturing and high-tech industries and is an essential element in the production process of various finished products.SMEs play a key role in supporting the sustainability and strengthening the stability of the industrial ecosystem through flexibility, supply chain diversification, and cooperation with large companies.Although there are many prior studies on the innovation performance of SMEs, there is a lack of research on the innovation performance of materials and components SMEs, and most of the studies have analyzed the effects of individual factors on innovation performance based on analysis of variance methods such as regression.Therefore, this study aims to identify the main combined factors that affect SMEs' product and process innovation by using logistic regression and fsQCA methods together, focusing on the chemical industry, which is a representative industry that encompasses both the material and component fields.For this purpose, this study used 2022 manufacturing data from the Korea Innovation Survey, a representative statistical survey on innovation in Korean companies.A total of 167 chemical industry SMEs with no missing data were analyzed.The logistic regression analysis showed that using various external information sources positively impacted the creation of product and process innovations in the chemical industry SMEs.In addition, benefiting from various government supports had a positive effect on the creation of product and process innovations.Next, the fsQCA analysis was conducted to derive the combined factors that generate product and process innovation rather than the significance of individual independent variables.The results show that the diversity of external information sources and diversity of government support receipt when combined with firm scale, generate product and process innovation.Therefore, this study provides enterprises' managers and policymakers with implications that they should consider strategies that can expand the scope of external information and government support while increasing the firm scale to create product and process innovation for materials and parts SMEs, especially those in the chemical industry.