Smes managers’ ratings of pricing policies for marketing of consumers’ goods in abia state, nigeria

Abstract

The survival of SMEs in Abia State depends on their ability to dispose of goods produced. It is through marketing the goods that SMEs reach the customers, recover money used for production, and make profit in return. This study was carried out to determine the pricing policies adopted by SMEs managers in marketing consumers’ goods in Abia State, Nigeria. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study. Survey research design was adopted, and the population of the study consisted of 1,809 SMEs managers in Abia State. A sample size of 328 SMEs managers was selected using Taro Yamane formula. The sampling technique was a proportionate random sampling. A structured questionnaire which was validated by three experts in the field of educationand marketing was used for data collection. Structured questionnaire titled “Utilization of Pricing Policies in Marketing Consumer Goods Questionnaire (UPP-MCGQ)”, containing 15 items was used for data collection. The reliability of the instrument was established using pilot-testing and data collected were analyzed using Cronbach Alpha formula which yielded correlation coefficients of 0.86 and 0.91 for clusters B1 and B2 respectively with an overall value of 0.89. Data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and ANOVA to answer the research questions and test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that SMEs managers utilize value based pricing policies in marketing their goods to a small extent while they utilize dynamic pricing policy to a high extent. Years of experience were not significant factors on the extent SMEs managers utilize value based and dynamic pricing policies in marketing consumer goods. It was concluded that SMEs managers must ensure that their prices elicit the required demand of their products to cover business costs and make profit in the marketplace. The researcher recommended among others that, managers of SMEs should focus more on understanding customers’ value of their goods to enable them effectively set prices that will stimulate sales and generate profit.