Marketing Challenges and Opportunities Confronting Small Scale Businesses in Nigeria – A Lesson for Young Entreprenueur

Abstract

It is commonly belived by many people that an average Nigerian prefer imported to made-in-Nigeria goods. In view of this, attempt is made in this paper to uncover opportunities and challenges to marketing of home made goods in Nigeria. A survey of one hundred and seventy HND (part-time) Accountancy and Marketing students of Yaba College of Technology was used for investigation. Data was obtained by self-administered questionnaire and analysed using descriptive statistics. It was confirmed that most of the respondents buy foreign goods. However, occasionally locally made goods are purchased because of quality, price, government appeal, patriotic zeal, availability and absence of imported ones. Opportunities for marketing local goods include large population, improved economic infrastructure, deregulated policy, incentives to local producers, ban on import, availability of skilled manpower and natural resources, and government patronage of made-in-Nigeria goods. With the ongoing deregulation policy of federal government and privatization of public utilities, local businesses will have control on price of their products. Demand and supply will take over government price fixing and make the private sector businesses more rewarding to the players. In view of these developments, it is recommended that Nigerian entrepreneurs should study and exploit government incentives that affect their businesses and participate in government contract through competitive bidding, undergo marketing workshop to apply marketing techniques in their operations.

Keywords: Marketing, challenges, opportunities, small scale businesses, made-in-Nigeria goods.