MARKETING PRACTICES OF SMALL-SCALE BUSINESSES
Entrepreneurial Marketing (EM) practices have been identified as one of the important key ingredients for superior performance and global competitiveness in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The success or failure of SMEs is said to rests in part on the nature and types of marketing practices they employ. This study investigated the effect of Entrepreneurial Marketing practices on the performance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Makurdi Metropolis of Benue state, Nigeria. The place of Entrepreneurial marketing practices in positively enhancing the performance of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises has often attracted mixed conclusions, yet SMEs are essential to economic growth in Nigeria and they are a major source of employment and contribute significantly towards the Gross Domestic Products (GDP). A cross-sectional survey design was put in place for the study. The unit of analysis was organizations while the owner/managers of SMEs were the respondents. Systematic, simple random and snowbell sampling techniques were employed to collect the needed data for the study. A sample size of 401 SMEs covering all sectors that exist in the study area was drawn from a population of 1101 SMEs. Descriptive and Inferential statistics were used to empirically and statistically analyze the data collected for the study with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Performance variables include Return on Investment, Customer Satisfaction, Market share and Sakes Growth. The findings of the study revealed that Entrepreneurial marketing practices made up of Customer Relationship Management with a p-value of 0.012, Market segmentation with 0.038, Quality with 0.026 and Market Promotion 0.031 have significant positive effect on SMEs performance, while co-opetion with 0.002 was not found to be a predictor of SME performance in Makurdi Metropolis of Benue State, Nigeria. The study found that marketing practices have positive effect on the performance of SMEs in the study area. It therefore recommended among others that SMEs managers and operators should always employ appropriate marketing practices for their firms. They should also regularly and effectively evaluate the marketing practices employed to ensure they are positively impacting on their firm’s performance.
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