Enhancing Small Firms’ Growth through Marketing Orientation: the Case of Women Home-Based Businesses in a Young Market

Abstract

Women home-based entrepreneurship is a worldwide phenomenon. However, in Nigeria, the businesses are mostly engaged in a relatively underperforming sector, characterized by low growth, low profit, and high discontinuity rates. One of the predominant issues confronting women home-based businesses is poor marketing. Thus the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of marketing orientation on the growth of women home-based businesses. The study was conducted in the Gombe and Akko metropolis of Gombe State, Nigeria. The study adopted the quantitative research design using cross-sectional studies. 86 questionnaires were distributed and 79 were found useful for analysis. The unit of analysis were women home-based entrepreneurs. Multiple regression was used to analyze the data, with the aid of the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS). The results found that customer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination are significant predictors of firm growth. The major limitation of the study is the focus on the informal sector whose database is not available. Secondly, due to lack of database on women home-based businesses in the study area, convenience and snowball sample were employed in a quantitative study. This study is significant to both the theory and practice. It extend the model of marketing orientation to WHBBs. It will also benefits women entrepreneurs who aspire to grow their businesses. This is the first empirical study to investigate the effect of customer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination on sales growth in an emerging market of Nigeria.