ABSTRACT

This Research work is designed to analyse, the various aspect of market orientation practices in small business enterprise, it is primarily aimed at the study of "whether or not", inadequate Market orientation can lead to small business failures.

It also touched, on the significance of market orientation, it's performance and other related industrial Issues, and thereafter, given recommendations where and when necessary in order to check or completely eliminate, the issue of business collapse or failures and help increase there overall performance and turnover of small-scale businesses in Nigeria.

For the purpose of this research, the primary source of data collection was used to obtained data for the project, (Application of questionnaires) in order to collect and collate Information, to arrive at a complete inference on the research Topic.

A hundred and fifty questionnaires was printed and issued out to various respondents, of which only 60% where able to be retrieved.

Twenty (20) questionnaires were randomly selected from the 60% (90) representing different fields of business and was used for the purpose of computation and analysis of the Project.

The findings and conclusions from these analysis shows that, Market orientation helps to enhance profitability, Organizational performance, the customer retention as well as Marketing innovative ness in small business.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND TO STUDY

Ten percent of the profit before tax made by bonus is directed towards financing Small and Medium Scale Industries in Nigeria (SMES) as directed by the Federal Government through the Apex body in the country's financial institution - Central Bank of Nigeria CBN. This has come to stay as a policy, brought forth as a result of the overwhelming impact of this sector to a country's economic development as evidenced in the tracks of nations like: Brazil, Argentina, India, China, Malaysia amongst others.

Financing this sector of the economy adequately by these nations has moved them forward economically. Newly industrialized economy (NIE) were basically shown the way forward by throwing their weight behind small and medium scale industry.

Many more policies have been signed into law by different governments to improve this sector. Lately, we have the economic reform: National Empowerment for Economic

Development Strategies (NEEDS) by the Obasanjo Administration and one of its main objectives is the development of SMEs.

Nevertheless, not every small business floated either individually or with the Government's aid has come to stay as inadequate marketing skill-market orientation practice among other factors is set to ruin its continuity.

Continued rising and disappearance of small businesses would be seen over a long period of time until critical issues like marketing orientations are analyzed and consciously laid in the minds of business managers and entrepreneurs. This skill would help keep the industry live and prevent early demise if any at all.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

How does inadequate market orientation lead to small business failure?

PURPOSE OF STUDY

Generally, the purposes of this research are:

I).     To show the significance of market orientation in the effective running of business.

ii).    To guide entrepreneurs of business.

Specifically, the purpose include:

i.       The study would guide existing small-scale businesses in the running of the business.

ii.       This study would also prepare prospective small ­scale business entrepreneurs with respective to skill acquisition on market orientation before starting up.

iii.     It would also assist other researchers in conducting similar research.

iv.     It would also add to the body of knowledge for information sourcing.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following questions are hereby asked:

i)       Is it because market orientation dictates profitability?

ii)      Is it because market orientation affects performance?

iii)    Is innovativeness a function of market orientation?

iv)     Is customer retention a function of market orientation?

RESEARCH HYPOTHESES

With respect to the statement of problem and research questions I make the following hypotheses:

i).      Market orientation dictates profitability: H1

ii).    Market orientation affects performance: H2

iii).   Innovativeness is a function of market orientation: H3

iv).   Customer retention is a function of market orientation: H4

SCOPE OF STUDY

This study is limited to small-scale businesses resident in Lagos State only. Lagos State was chosen because of proximity and convenience to the researcher.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This research would aid small business managers, government and policy makers in assessing small-scale business, its performance and enacting policies on them respectively.

LIMITATIONS

This research does not cover all states of the federation but restricted to Lagos alone due to my working environment restraint.