The effect of broadcast search and ideation community contest on firms’ innovation: the mediating role of relationship quality

In the modern business world, firms gain enormous success in innovation by using social media. This approach ostensibly reduces firms’ cost by decreasing reliance on internal research and development. Organizations often use knowledge from other organizations and customers by using social media for innovation. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to explore the impacts of broadcast search and ideation community contest on innovation. Additionally, this study aims to narrow the gap by investigating the mediating role of relationship quality between the two dimensions of social media activities and innovation, respectively. Employing a sample of 393 manufacturing firms in Malaysia, our results confirm that the broadcast search and ideation community contest dimensions of social media activities are positively associated with relationship quality, but ideation community contest also impacts on innovation. Further, the results provide evidence that relationship quality plays a mediating role between ideation community contest and innovation. The central arguments regarding social media activities and their relationship to innovation transcend national boundaries, and many of the policy recommendations are important for Malaysian manufacturing firms.