TITLE:
The Impact of Institutional Support in SMEs Marketing, and Growth—A Case Study of Retail SMEs in Ghana
AUTHORS:
Abraham Osei, Yunfei Shao, Kwarteng Solomon Forkuoh, Michael Aboagye Osei
KEYWORDS:
SMEs, Growth, Marketing Challenges, Government Support
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.4 No.3,
July
1,
2016
ABSTRACT: Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are still hailed as the panacea of economic development of
many countries, since they play a fundamental part of the economic fabric in developing a crucial
role in furthering growth, innovation and prosperity. In the quest to achieve growth, SMEs unfortunately
face severe challenges including the marketing of their products, which stem from unqualified
employees in the marketing department, inadequate finance to undertake marketing research,
go international, and to participate in trade fairs among other factors. Leaving most SMEs
to face these challenges alone usually leads to high rate of demise and low growth rate, hence government
and other multi donor organizations provide support to these SMEs in the area of finance,
market, managerial capacity building among others. This research assesses the impact of the government
support in the form of marketing assistance (training of marketing staffs, access to foreign
marketing, trade fairs and exhibitions) to some selected retail SMEs in the ten Regional Capitals
of Ghana on their growth. Using firm data report, the results indicated that the provision of
support for SMEs to participate in trade shows and exhibitions highly impact positively on SMEs
growth, followed by the provision of support in access to international market, and support in the
training of marketing staffs of SMEs.