Marketing Practices And Business Performance Of Small Scale Food Processing Firms In Ghana

ABSTRACT Small scale businesses are on the growing trend as these businesses can be found at almost every sector of any economy globally due to its important contribution to national development. The SMEs contributes massively and large percentage to nation‘s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in ensuring growth, employment and income stability of most countries in Africa and the rest of the world. This research is basically concerned with the extent of marketing practices (i.e. market research, market segmentation and marketing mix) and business performance of small scale food processing firms in Ghana. Most studies done over the past years talks more about the market orientations of SMEs in both developed and developing countries and the few works done on marketing practices emphasis more on the large firms or businesses. Primary data were collected by the use of structured questionnaire which were designed and administered to food processing firms within the SMEs and other stakeholders were interviewed face-to-face for their input on this study. Secondary materials were extracted from relevant textbooks, reports, articles and journals. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and PLS were used for the data analysis. Even though small businesses are growing and it play an important role in nation building by offering employment to many and adding to the nation‘s GDP, it faces a lot of challenges in finances, machineries and other logistic which to some extent had been attributed to their ways of thinking regarding marketing as most of the SMEs think marketing practices as something for the large firms so their activities are more informal and unplanned but relies on the intuition and energy of the owner-manager. Finally, effective implementation of the recommendation could lead to a more improved marketing practices, growth of the small scale businesses in the country and eventually result in creation of employment as well as poverty reduction in Ghana.