Effects of innovativeness and innovation behavior on tourism SMEs performance: The case of Albania

Though SMEs play a crucial role in countries' economic development, some of them succeed and others fail during their life cycle. In this regard, managers/owners continually have to identify the most significant factors that influence performance management. In addition, this is crucial for developing countries such as Albania, wherein such studies are lacking, furthermore, tourism sector is experiencing very fast development. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the interplay of innovativeness, innovation behavior and SMEs' performance indicators. Exploiting face-to-face techniques, data for 211 valid cases have been gathered from Albanian tourism SMEs. By using SEM statistical methodology, the results indicate that innovativeness significantly affects innovation behavior. While innovativeness does not affect SMEs performance directly, its significant effects are indirect, through the mediation role of innovation behavior. Regarding innovation behavior, the results indicate that the more tourism's SMEs innovate in terms of ICT, cooperation (associations, networks etc.), the more their performance will positively increase. Operationalization of the vague term of innovation is a contribution to the literature. Finally, other theoretical and managerial contributions of this study are discussed.