Small And Medium-Sized Enterprise (Sme) Branding And Outcomes In Ghana – The Role Of Resources And Capabilities

ABSTRACT

It has been suggested that a key way of enterprise survival is to pursue competitive

marketing practices such as branding, which enables firms to differentiate their products

and services in the marketplace, and to become more sustainable. However, there have

been some erroneous perceptions that branding is a preserve of large businesses and as a

result, scholarly evidence suggests that the practice has not gained much attention within

SME business settings. The study explores the relationships among SME resource

positions, branding capabilities and branding benefits. More specifically, the research

draws on the resource-based theory and dynamic capability theory to examine the

differential roles played by resources and branding capabilities in enabling SMEs to

achieve product branding benefits amidst the constraints in their environment. Through

extensive literature review, a conceptual framework and empirical results from 304 SMEs,

the study employs exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses along with structural

equation modelling to evaluate a proposed model for understanding the relationships

among the constructs, as well as examining mediating and moderating effects. The study

finds that an enterprise’s ability to achieve branding benefits is dependent on how SME

owners/managers harness and deploy their resources and branding capability generated

over a period through their tacit branding practices/activities. In addition, resource

possession alone may not result in gaining branding benefits, unless they are harnessed in

tandem with branding capabilities, along a set of branding efforts needed to realize the

benefits. Again, SMEs’ environments determine, to an extent, the resources they can

access, the capabilities they can build, and how these can be integrated with branding

efforts to realize branding benefits. The theoretical and practical implications of the results

are also discussed in the thesis.