Innovation and export performance in the textile industry: The case of Southeastern Anatolia

Innovation has become one of the determinants of global competition in the 21st century. All the innovative activities carried out in both production and administrative fields are defined as the innovation in literature. In the studies, performed of innovation the patent applications and research and development are usually shown as the main indicator. Increases in research and development expenditures provide the export products to get ahead of its competitors in foreign markets. In the study, the impact of innovation on export performance is analyzed. The analyzed sector is textile and the study was carried on the textile export companies in the South-eastern Anatolia Region. The textile sector, due to its labour intensive structure and the potentially high export in Turkey is seen as the locomotive sector in markets. Being one of the last rows in many macroeconomic indicators, the South-eastern Anatolia Region is seen as investment grade for textile and its sub-sectors. In this study, data were obtained through survey method from 207 companies engaged in textile export in the South-eastern Anatolia Region. In the analysis, primarily the innovation indicators were determined by determining in accordance with the literature and with the data obtained through survey by using statistical and econometric analysis it was tested that which variables how influenced the exports. In this context, while getting export amount of the companies as the dependent variable, the innovation determinants, research and development, patent, number of employees, training, year of activity, the number of university graduates workers, investment plan, fair participation and quality certification were taken as the independent variables.The data obtained through survey application were primarily interpreted by statistical applications such as frequency analysis, Chi-Square test of independent, correlation analysis, T-test, Levene test and analysis of variance. In the econometric analysis, the Cross-Sectional Analysis of the companies was carried out through the data of companies for 2013. The significance of the variables available in the cross-sectional analysis were tested on 18 established models and was determined that which innovative variable how much effected the export of the companies.