Effects of entrepreneurial marketing on the survival of manufacturing small and medium enterprises in South-East Nigeria.
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Date
2019
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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.
Description
Doctoral degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.