BUILDING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE THROUGH PRODUCT INNOVATIONS BASED ON RAW MATERIAL MODIFICATIONS

Abstract

Changes in consumers’ activity on the agri-food market in Poland, especially their growing awareness and knowledge of products translate into competitive strategies of enterprises. Product strategies with increasing significance of innovativeness have the leading role among competitivestrategies. The aim of this article is to present product’s innovations in terms of input (raw material) and discuss its role in creating competitive advantages of enterprises. The crispbread market is an example of the implementation of these actions. This article analyses this market in terms of changes in product-based innovativeness. Desk research was applied to analyze the most important concepts and determines detailed research areas that are adequate to the issue of raw materialbased innovativeness. Analyses proved that in Poland conventional (traditional) production systems prevailed over modernones, which are characterised by flexibility, leading technology and organisation of variable serial production. For this reason, innovations are being developed. Modifications in the raw material composition have an element of originality and they should be treated as product-based innovations observed from the market perspective. The development of new trends in production and distribution as well as the possibilities of assortment changes reflect global tendencies in the trends of product innovations on the food market.