New media marketing innovation more popular with foreign-owned companies

The most common form of marketing innovation carried out by enterprises according to a recently published Central Statistics Office survey was new media.
The Community Innovation Survey 2006-2008 is a survey of innovation activities of enterprises in Ireland and other EU Member States, jointly conducted by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and Forfás in Ireland.
According to the survey, just one in four of all enterprises (27%) carried out a marketing innovation between 2006 and 2008. The larger the company, the more likely this was: marketing innovation was introduced by over one in three medium and large enterprises in the same time frame. Also, foreign-owned companies in Ireland were more likely than Irish companies to be more innovative on the marketing front, the survey found. Almost one in three foreign owned enterprises introduced a marketing innovation in the period 2006-2008 compared to over one in four Irish-owned enterprises.

On the new media front 16% of all enterprises indicated that they engaged in the introduction of new media or techniques for product promotion; nearly 19% of foreign owned enterprises introduced these compared to over 15% of Irish owned enterprises. 15% of businesses with 10-49 employees introduced innovation in this area compared to 21% of companies with 50-249 staff members and 24% of organisations with more than 250 employees.
According to the survey findings the reasons for innovation in marketing varied from increasing or maintaining market share (three quarters of respondents) and to introduce products to new customer groups (three in five enterprises).
Increased or maintaining market share was an important reason for nearly nine in ten large enterprises compared to just seven in ten small enterprises. Again it was more important for foreign owned enterprises than Irish enterprises (eight in ten compared to seven in ten, respectively).
The survey can be found in full here: http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/information_tech/2008/comminn0608.pdf