Entrepreneurship Marketing and Performance of SMES in Nigeria

Abstract

The study attempts to examine the influence of entrepreneurship marketing on performance of SMEs in Nigeria. Specifically, the study addresses the following objectives: To examine the influence of entrepreneurial marketing on the growth of SMEs in Nigeria and to investigate the extent to which innovativeness, pro-activeness, opportunity-driven, resource leveraging, risk taking, customer intensity and value creation influence the growth of SMEs in Nigeria. This research adopted a descriptive survey design. All the data used for the study were elicited from the sampled respondents through the use of questionnaire. The study population consists of all the 345 registered SMEs in Delta state, Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 120 SMEs which represents the sample size for the study. Multiple regressions were the statistical tool used to test the hypothesis proposed for the study. Data were coded and analyzed using the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20.0). The findings of the study show that entrepreneurship marketing is a driven force of economic growth and also helps to enhance the development of new product/service for existing markets. More so, the study reveals that the SMEs operators in Nigeria mostly use traditional form of marketing to reach potential customers and to entrench their brands. Interestingly, only few of them use modern marketing technology to promote their products and services. It was thus recommended that SMEs should take advantage of the emerging global technology to improve their overall performance.