The Impact of Institutional Support in SMEs Marketing, and Growth—A Case Study of Retail SMEs in Ghana

摘要

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.