Effects of entrepreneurial marketing on the survival of manufacturing small and medium enterprises in South-East Nigeria.

Abstract

Many manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria cease to exist before their fifth birthday. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of entrepreneurial marketing on the survival of manufacturing SMEs in Nigeria and to develop a new integrative entrepreneurial marketing model that would help ensure the survival of SMEs in Nigeria. The quantitative study adopted positivism as the research paradigm. Using a quantitative research design, stratified random sampling was employed to select owner-managers of manufacturing SMEs in the South-East geo-political zone of Nigeria. A survey was used to collect data via a structured questionnaire administered to 364 owner-managers. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were used to test the reliability after a pilot study had been conducted. Exploratory fact analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to validate the findings. The descriptive statistics were used to analyse data relating to the demographics of owner-managers and dimensions of entrepreneurial marketing. Inferential statistics, such as Pearson’s correlation coefficient, multiple regressions analysis and structural equation modelling (SEM) were applied to test the hypotheses via IBM SPSS statistics version 25 and IBM SPSS AMOS version 25. The results indicated that entrepreneurial marketing has a direct and significantly positive impact on manufacturing SMEs in Nigeria. The tested integrative EM model also indicated that proactiveness, calculated risk-taking, resource leveraging, customer intensity, value creation, market sensing and teamwork have a direct and significantly positive effect on SMEs’ survival. However, innovativeness, which is considered as one of the key dimensions of entrepreneurial marketing, shows a significant but negative effect on SME survival. Alliance formation showed no significant effects. In the light of these results, the study developed a new model of entrepreneurial marketing for manufacturing SMEs by incorporating teamwork and market sensing in the existing model. The new integrative entrepreneurial marketing model is valuable, not only to owner-managers to enhance the survival of their businesses and reduce failures, but also to academics as a basis for robust future research. Therefore, the study recommended the adoption of the new integrative entrepreneurial marketing model in the management of manufacturing SMEs to aid survival.