Will customer change affect enterprise innovation efficiency? A study from the perspective of social networks

An enterprise innovation strategy is the driving force for the healthy and sustainable development of enterprises, and high-quality, efficient innovation is important for improving enterprises' market value and promoting their high-quality development. Customer relationships are an important factor affecting enterprise product technology and enterprise innovation; however, few studies have evaluated the impact of customer change on innovation efficiency. Therefore, from the perspective of social capital, we use China's listed manufacturing companies' data from 2013 to 2020 to systematically examine how customer changes affect enterprise innovation performance, and test the impact of social networks on the relationship between customer change and enterprise innovation efficiency. The empirical research shows that customer change reduces enterprises' innovation efficiency, and that social network relationships have an intermediary effect on the relationship between customer change and innovation efficiency; that is, the social network relationships reduce the negative impact of customer change on enterprise innovation efficiency. Further analysis shows that this mediating effect is not obvious for enterprises experiencing large customer changes but is prominent for nonstate-owned or nontechnology-intensive enterprises. Our study enriches and expands the research on how customer relationships influence enterprise innovation efficiency, clarifies different mechanisms due to various "networks", and provides new empirical evidence to enable enterprises to improve their competitiveness.