Lucy Horace OWONTE PhD
Department of Marketing, Port Harcourt Polytechnic
Rumuola, Port Harcourt
For correspondence, email: lucyowonte@gmail.com
Abstract
The study investigated Entrepreneurial Marketing Strategies and Business Growth of SMEs in Rivers State. The researcher adopted the correlational research design. The population of the study consisted of staff of 197 Small and Medium Scale Businesses registered with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in the 23 LGAs in Rivers State. This study focused on a total of 264 staff of the SME organizations in the 23 LGAs in Rivers State, Nigeria. The researcher adopted the census sampling technique in which the entire population was studies. The instrument was a questionnaire. Out of 264 copies of questionnaires distributed 250 or 85% were duly completed and returned, the study therefore used the returned copies for its analysis. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while Pearson Product Correlation Coefficient (PPMC) was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study should that significant relationship exists between entrepreneurial marketing strategies and business growth of SMEs in Rivers State. The study concluded that adopting entrepreneurial marketing strategies would lead to business growth of the SMEs in Rivers State. It identified digital marketing strategy and relationship marketing strategy as potent strategies for entrepreneurial marketing that relates with business growth of SMEs in Rivers State. The stance of the study is that with the adoption of appropriate marketing entrepreneurial strategies such as digital and relationship, business growth would be guaranteed within the study area. It recommended that SMEs should train and retrain their staff on the use of digital devices to foster digital marketing strategy and that relationship with customers should be encouraged by management of SMEs in order to encourage business growth.
Keywords: Entrepreneurial marketing, Digital Strategy, Relationship Strategy, Business, Growth, SMEs