A Dissertation submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the
Degree of Master of Business Administration in Corporate Management
(MBA-CM) of Mzumbe University.
Although innovation is a vital aspect of sector in furniture manufacturing SMEs
worldwide, in Tanzania, there is a slight understanding of how these innovations
bring impact to the manufacturing SMEs' performance since nowadays customers
prefer imported furniture than the local furniture. The understanding of the impact of
innovation on the performance of furniture manufacturing SMEs is very crucial as
the owners or managers of SMEs can be motivated to apply it sincerely in their
business to increase their business performance. The research aimed to investigate
the effect of innovation on the presentation of furniture manufacturing SMEs in Dar
es Salaam. The expressive study design with the quantifiable approach was used to
investigate the impact of modernisation on the presentation of furniture industrial.
The targeted populace for this research comprised registered furniture manufacturing
SMEs in Dar es Salaam. The study applied a purposive sampling to choose a sample
size of 96 participants. In this study, both descriptive and inferential analyses were
used in the analysis of data. The descriptive analysis was conducted by indicating
frequencies and percentages while the inferential analysis was performed through
multiple regression to indicate the connection among independents (product, process,
and market innovation) and the outcome variable (SMEs performance). Findings
from the multiple regression analysis show that product, process, and market are all
positive statistically significant. Moreover, findings depicted that market innovation
has less influence on the performance of SMEs compared to process and product
innovation. This shows that market innovation has minimum influence on the
performance of SMEs compared to product and process innovation in the business.
This displays that SMEs should put more effort into product and process innovation.
The study recommends that SMEs to effectively attain high-quality product
innovation, government management must create a supportive business environment.
Also, the Government of Tanzania, private institutions and furniture firms should
assist the diffusion of competent and effective technology and training, which will
guarantee the expertise in the domestic furniture industry where SMEs can have
fullaffordability of making competent furniture not only in the local market but also
in the worldwide market.