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.
Highlights
Several researchers across the globe have recommended the need for external support from both government and non-governmental institutions to improve small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)’ performance for the needed economic growth [1]-[4]
In a comprehensive survey by [25], on the impact of the external support on over 5000 SMEs in the UK, the results indicated that, 19% of the SMEs had increased the workforce, 64% were employing the same number, while 17% have reduced the workforce, but in the end there was a net employee increase over the survey period from 2012 to 2013
The questioners consist of two parts, with the first part concentrated on the biographic information of respondents and the second section consisting of Likert scale items demanding the extents of agreement and disagreement to items specified for the study regarding the impact of independent variables on the growth and developments of their businesses
Summary
Several researchers across the globe have recommended the need for external support from both government and non-governmental institutions to improve SMEs’ performance for the needed economic growth [1]-[4]. Empirical evidence on the impact of the institutional support on SMEs growth had been established among SMEs in the Asian countries such as: North Korea, Japan and China [12] In another development, [2] was of the view that, for maximum returns from support offered to the SMEs, the external support should base on developing the owner or manager networking efficiency, provision of additional capital and advisory services among other services and all with the aim of improving business performance and growth. This view had been supported and proven empirically by [13], when they observed that, government assistance to SMEs in Tanzania in the form of favorable business environmental regulation in the area of taxes, improvement in infrastructures and the provision of financial assistance in the form of loans, grants and subsidies were translated into the growth of the country’s SMEs which resulted in the growth of GDP
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