THE IMPACT OF MARKETING INNOVATION ON THE COMPETITIVENESS OF ENTERPRISES IN THE CONTEXT OF INDUSTRY 4.0

Marketing innovation is identified as a search for creative and new solutions to problems and needs. For businesses to become more competitive and improving their performance, they must constantly develop new products as well as strategies. This paper is based on the research of areas of marketing in the context of Industry 4.0 and its impacts. The implications of digitization are the content of the research presented here. On the basis of the research, a pilot research was carried out among 50 enterprises that present themselves using Industry 4.0. A list of 15 basic tools of marketing innovation was compiled through an evaluation using the content analysis method. Eleven main impacts of marketing innovation which the respondents consider to be important were then generated. These impacts were described and subsequently evaluated using descriptive statistics methods, on the basis of which their importance was empirically verified. The impacts that businesses classed as being most important were: increasing the competitiveness of the company, increasing work productivity and changing the corporate culture. The results of the research showed that there are differences in how impacts are seen by SMEs and by large enterprises. The impacts are rated as most important by enterprises from the automotive industry with a European corporate culture. The research has empirically confirmed that businesses consider the greatest impact of innovative marketing in the context of Industry 4.0 to be the increase in enterprise competitiveness, which was the highest rated impact of the research. The paper has shed fresh light on our current understanding of innovation as a factor in competitiveness

Complex Material and Surface Analysis of Anterolateral Distal Tibial Plate of 1.4441 Steel

Nickel-based austenitic stainless steels are still common for manufacture of implants intended for acute hard tissue reinforcement or stabilization, but the risk of negative reactions due to soluble nickel-rich corrosion products must be considered seriously. Corrosion processes may even be accelerated by the evolution of microstructure caused by excessive heat during machining, etc. Therefore, this study also deals with the investigation of microstructure and microhardness changes near the threaded holes of the anterolateral distal tibial plate containing approx. 14wt.% Ni by composition. There were only insignificant changes of microhardness, grain size, or microstructure orientation found close to the area of machining. In addition, wettability measurements of surface energy demonstrated only minor differences for bulk material and areas close to machining. The cyclic potentiodynamic polarization tests were performed in isotonic physiological solution. The first cycle was used for the determination of corrosion characteristics of the implant after chemical passivation, the second cycle was used to simulate real material behavior under the condition of previous surface damage by excessive pitting corrosion occurring during previous polarization. It was found that the damaged and spontaneously repassived surface showed a three-time higher standard corrosion rate than the “as received” chemically passivated surface. One may conclude that previous surface damage may decrease the lifetime of the implant significantly and increase the amount of nickel-based corrosion products distributed into surrounding tissues