Will Customer/supplier Innovation Affect R&D Investment?

Technological innovation is not only regarded as the main driving force for the company's success and survival,but also as an important factor to promote national economic growth.With the advent of a new era of global "all things interconnected,all things intelligent",R&D innovation has entered a new era.Under the guidance of the basic policy of "innovation-driven,quality-oriented,green development,structural optimization,talent-oriented",R&D investment in China has been increasing rapidly in recent years,and enterprises have gradually become the leading role of scientific and technological innovation.However,the overall R&D investment of Chinese companies is not balanced.Therefore,how to improve the overall R&D investment level of Chinese enterprises and guide enterprises to formulate appropriate R&D investment strategy is an urgent problem to be solved in the field of corporate innovation.At present,there are abundant researches on the influencing factors of internal innovation,such as corporate governance characteristics,financial characteristics and so on.However,the external factors affecting corporate innovation activities need to be excavated.The "patent war" between Apple and its suppliers demonstrates the existence and significant impact of innovation externalities among supply chain enterprises.The close economic relationship between supplier and customer leads to knowledge spillover and knowledge transfer among supply chain enterprises.The innovation of customers and suppliers will have an impact on the company.In order to verify whether customer and supplier's innovation capability is related to R&D activities,whether customer and supplier will have different effects because they are in different positions in the supply chain,and whether supply chain concentration will affect this relationship,this paper starts from innovation externality theory and knowledge spillover effect.Taking Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies which disclosed the names,rankings and sales/procurement ratios of the top five customer/supplier companies from 2012 to 2016 as samples,this paper empirically examines the correlation between the number of patent applications from customers/suppliers and the R&D investment of the companies,and further adds the degree of customer concentration/supplier concentration to the regression to test whether they are not.The effect of concentric degree on this correlation is different.The results show that customer and supplier innovation ability can promote the growth of R&D investment,the stronger the innovation ability of customer or supplier,the more R&D investment of the company;and compared with supplier innovation ability,customer innovation ability has a stronger impact;customer concentration has a positive correlation with customer innovation ability and R&D investment.The supplier concentration has no significant effect on the relationship between supplier innovation capability and R&D investment.The results of a large number of robustness tests also confirm the above conclusions.This study includes the following five parts:The first part is introduction.This part introduces the background,significance,framework,methods and innovation of this paper.The second part is literature review.This part reviews the relevant literature on corporate innovation,supplier/customer and corporate innovation,clarifies the research process and current situation in the above areas,and indicates the importance and necessity of selecting and researching supplier/customer relationship differences and corporate R&D investment in the literature review,which lays a theoretical foundation for the following.The third part,theoretical basis and research assumptions.Based on innovation externality theory,knowledge spillover effect and demand pull theory,this part analyzes and deduces the impact of customer/supplier innovation capability on R&D investment and its possibility by combining stakeholder theory,resource dependence theory,transaction cost theory,transaction specificity theory and knowledge transfer theory.The influence mechanism,and the moderating effect and difference of customer/supplier concentration on this kind of relationship are discussed,and the research hypothesis is put forward.The fourth part is research design and empirical analysis.In the part of research and design,this paper firstly introduces the data sources and sample selection,then explains the definition of the main variables involved and their measurement methods one by one,and then constructs the empirical model of this paper.In the empirical analysis part,this paper first carries on the descriptive statistical analysis and the correlation test to the selected samples,then analyzes the multiple regression results of the regression model emphatically,obtains the preliminary research conclusion,and finally carries on the robustness test in seven ways.The fifth part,conclusions and policy recommendations.This part firstly summarizes and sublimates the research conclusions in the fourth part,then puts forward some suggestions on R&D innovation and supply chain management activities,government information disclosure system and patent statistical methods,and finally indicates the shortcomings of this paper and the direction of future research.The main innovations of this paper are as follows:(1)In the research method,the literature in the field of customer/supplier and corporate innovation is basically based on the subjective data obtained from the questionnaire,lacking certain objectivity.This study uses the data disclosed in the annual reports of listed companies and the patents of customers and suppliers manually collected on the website of the State Intellectual Property Office to verify the relationship between the two,effectively compensating for the lack of questionnaire data;(2)from the external impact of customers and suppliers of this channel to study corporate innovation The influencing factors of activities and the two specific ways of market demand and knowledge spillover are put forward,which provide new research directions and empirical evidence for the related research on the influencing factors and innovation externalities of corporate innovation;(3)Empirical test and discovery that both customer and supplier innovation ability will have an impact on R&D investment and exist.Furthermore,we find that customer and supplier concentration have moderating effects on the relationship and the degree is different,which breaks the traditional model in which the previous literature examines the relationship between customer or supplier and innovation.It also helps to better identify the position of enterprises in the supply chain,and provides an effective reference for enterprise supply chain management,customer and supplier selection strategy.