Small businesses are seen as having accelerative effects on achieving economic growth and development. But this would be possible if the goods and services so produced have encapsulated consumers? desires and aspirations and good enough to enhance patronage so as to encourage a profitable exchange. That is efficient marketing decisions must be made continually. It was observed that the bane of well-financed small businesses in the country is wrong marketing decisions especially by new entrants. This study evaluated the marketing decisions in a furniture making business using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) which is applicable to the modeling of any decision choice which can be represented hierarchically at least at two levels of sets of criteria: objective for evaluation and activities or alternative courses of action. Small businesses are always faced with such multi-criteria problems in planning and evaluation, requiring trade-off decisions between conflicting objectives competiting for scarce resources. These decisions can often be represented as alternative courses of action. The AHP allows those who are closest to the problem (the decision maker-DM) to identify and structure a customized hierarchy representing their multi-criterion problem from which a trade-off of relative references takes place. The result showed that new entrants into this business would succeed in the Lagos market if they focus on major benefits like comfort, looks and durability of the furniture with the intent of developing the luxury and executive positioning, so as to make profit in an optimistic environment. It is concluded that an insight into the customers and desires vis-à-vis the product benefits is important for small business survival as it helps in the understanding of operational terrain and the likely impact of environmental variables on business objectives and strategies.
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