Marketing Environment and Business Failure: A Study of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in Northern Nigeria

Abstract

The study identified the relationship between the marketing environment and business failure in Northern Nigeria. The population was identified to be 5409 SMEs as at 2015 to 2018 before the advent of Corona Virus. For fair representation of Northern Nigeria; Sokoto, Kaduna and Gombe were chosen from North West, North Central and North East respectively. The Sampling technique is simple random sampling and snowball method was adopted to determine the sample size of failed SMEs in the respective sampled regions.384 SMEs were identified as sample for the study and structured questionnaire was used as the method of data collection. Regression analysis was used as the method of data analysis, the variables of marketing environment were regressed against each variable of business failure. It was found out there is an insignificant relationship between company's policies and market competition. Hence, it was recommended that Managers of SMEs in Northern Nigeria should align their company's policies for competitive advantages.