R&D INVESTMENT AND FIRM COMPETITIVENESS IN THE NIGERIAN CONSUMER GOODS INDUSTRY: EVIDENCE FROM DYNAMIC PANEL REGRESSION MODEL

Business and Marketing

In this we study explore the impact of R&D investment on firm competitiveness in the Nigerian consumer goods industry as well as the moderating role of firm heterogeneity using the dynamic fixed effect model. We consider firm competitiveness from both industry and stock market perspectives using market share and market value per share are proxies. Our analysis is based on a balanced panel dataset comprising 9 listed consumer goods firms over a period of 9 years from 2014 to 2022. We find that R&D investment has no significant impact on firm competitiveness regardless of how the latter is measured. However, our results show that firm heterogeneity significantly moderates the relationship between R&D investment and firm competitiveness. Based on these findings, we conclude that consumer goods firms are yet to commit sufficient financial resources to R&D activities as a way of enhancing their performance at both industry and stock market levels.

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