Marketing Research and the Potentials of SMEs in Sub-Saharan Africa: Conceptual Evidence from Nigeria
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study evaluated the relevance of marketing research in unveiling the potentials of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in sub-Saharan Africa with conceptual evidence from Nigeria. The study attempted to paint the pictures of marketing research and SMEs within the context of entrepreneurial marketing scheme. The study also adopted schema theory, the cognitive scheme for processing and retrieving marketing information, as the underpinning theory for the study. The explanatory cross-sectional survey research design was adopted as the study guide. The population of the study is made up of all operators of SMEs in Nigeria. Using multi-stage sampling technique, 248 marketing research-oriented operators of SMEs were selected. A structured interview schedule, which contains a number of nominal construct items, was used as research instrument to generate primary data from respondents that cut across the six geo-political zones in Nigeria. Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficients for all major constructs of the research instrument ranged between 0.73 and 0.81, while Average Variance Extracted (AVE) which further served as additional evidence of convergent validity also ranged from 0.842 to 0.865. Data generated were analyzed using basic descriptive statistics. The study revealed that the relevance of marketing research in unveiling the potentials of SMEs in sub-Saharan Africa can only be appreciated in the context of marketing function. Public relations and corporate affairs, human resource and personnel management, marketing and strategic management, as well as financial planning and technical development were conceptualized as the functional areas of business in which marketing research can easily be deployed to unveil the potentials of SMEs for optimal performance in sub-Saharan African region. The study concluded that some concerted efforts are needed to be made to reinvigorate the activities of the SMEs in sub-Saharan Africa. Marketing research, as amodern commercial tool, provides the required insights, direction and guide for optimized economic performance and sustainability of micro, small and medium scale enterprises in the region.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".