The Role of Knowledge Diffusion in Innovations in Retail Chains
The Role of Knowledge Diffusion in Innovations in Retail Chains

Summary/Abstract: Knowledge diffusion is the basis for innovation processes in business. In the Polish retail industry, the expansion of foreign commercial chains has contributed to a dynamic knowledge transfer in the sphere of management of buying and selling processes. The standards appropriate for global and international commercial chains have been introduced within several years as a result of integration, concentration and globalisation. Retail trade is a sector of high capacity to implement innovations. In their paper, the authors are planning to verify the phenomena associated with knowledge diffusion on the example of retail chains and to characterise its role for their innovation processes. Therefore, the areas related to knowledge diffusion in retail chains on the selected examples constitute the subject area of the paper. In the study the selected commercial enterprises were research entities. The analyses included in the paper concern the years between 2009 and 2014 that were the period of unstable economy development (time range). The presented results of conducted analyses concern Poland (spatial range). In the paper, the following goals of cognitive and descriptive character are assumed: 1. The cognitive goal of the proposed paper isto identify the key stakeholders (external) who are the source of knowledge diffusion for retail chains. 2. The descriptive goal of the paper is to indicate innovations, applied by the selected retail chains, based on knowledge diffusion coming from customers, competitors, and suppliers. In the paper, the assumption has been made that customers and suppliers as well as the providers of IT solutions are the main sources of knowledge diffusion that allowfor implementation of innovations. Also competitors are an important knowledge source for innovation while using benchmarking procedures. The following research methods were applied for the purpose of implementation of assumed goals: critical analysis of the literature of the subject, results of own research method concerning the impact of knowledge diffusion on innovation processes in the selected retail chains, and the case study method that showed the best marketing practices associated with developing innovations by retail chains on the grounds of knowledge diffusion.

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