CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
An Entrepreneur has been described as an actor in the market that his actions tend to influence many people in the market. No entrepreneur or enterprise, successful or big, can continue to hold a place of leadership unless it recognizes the modern marketing trend in business. It operates in a world of galloping change which creates new problems risk and opportunities and for which they have to mobilize the enterprise’s resources before changes make their impact felt. It must be noted that no matter the qualities and how goods an entrepreneur is, he would not be successful if he can’t market his product. Not only that, an entrepreneur must put many factors into consideration as well in other succeed.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) dominate the market in terms of sheer number of organization. Their role in the business world is difficult to overstate.
Despite this, there is a high failure rate among organizations, which can be explained to a significant degree by a lack of marketing understanding in this sector.
The concept of marketing in Entrepreneurship can not be overlooked by a entrepreneur. This area is where the entrepreneur gets to know key things about his customers, their needs, wants, purchasing habits, market geography etc. It is on this basis that this work looks into the aspect of marketing in Entrepreneurship activities.
1.1 ENTREPRENEUR AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
To understand the meaning clearly, there is need to explain who is an entrepreneurs?
What distinguishes him from other people?
An Entrepreneur is an individual who set-up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.
In other words, such an individual engages in the process of identifying, developing and bringing a ‘vision’ to life. The vision may be an innovative idea, an opportunity or simply a better way to do something. An entrepreneur is also viewed as an innovator. He introduces new ideas, new products, new techniques, opens up new markets. The entrepreneurs thus perceive business opportunities and take advantage of the scarce resources to use them.
He is that person who undertakes the voyage of creating value by pulling together a unique package of resources to exploit an opportunity. He has the capacity and capability to build something from practically nothing.
Entrepreneurs have also been described as people who have the ability to see and evaluate business opportunities, gather the necessary resources to take advantage of them and initiate appropriate action to ensure success. Meredith at al (1991).
According to Kao (1995), an entrepreneur is a person who undertakes a wealth-creating and value-adding process, through incubating ideas, assembling resources and a framework within the environment and must act in their interest and the interest of the society (Kao, 1995).
Entrepreneurs are achievement – oriented, like to take responsibility for decisions and dislike repetitive and routine work. Creative entrepreneurs posses high levels of energy and great degrees of perseverance and inauguration, which combined with a willingness to take moderate, calculated risk, enable then to transform what began as a very simple ill – defined idea characteristics.
· Innovator, Initiative and creativity
· Task – result oriented
· Leader and resources coordinator
· Risk – taker and self confidence
· High need for achievement and foresight.
Manfred (1997) stressed most importantly that entrepreneurs are the driving force of any nation. They are value adders and represent the wealth of a nation and its potentials to generate employment.
