Entrepreneurial Commitment and Investment Performance of Small Businesses in Abia State Nigeria (Published)
This study examines the relationship between entrepreneurial commitment and investment performance of small businesses in Abia State. Survey research design was employed in the study. The owners, managers and/or supervisors of 198 laundries, packaged water and paint sellers in Abia State were sent the questionnaire and 175 of them returned theirs, representing a response rate of 76.5%. The relationship between the variables were tested using Spearman Correlation Coefficient. The result showed that the dimensions of entrepreneurial commitment significantly influences investment performance. It was thus concluded that the commitment of the founder of a business is a major determining factor towards the success of her products/services, as well as the extent to which the business will be perceived by customers. To this end, it is recommended that small business founders should: focus on their customers’ experience; diversify product/service offerings in order to cater for customers’ changing tastes; frequently engage customers to get feedback on products/service and personalize customer’s experience in order to boost and strengthen customer relationship; invest heavily into information technology in the business especially at its early stage to scale growth; focus on social media by creating profiles on all of the major social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.); and seek mentor networks with the goal of picking up intensive management techniques that they can be deployed to more effectively and efficiently manage and grow their work force and business processes.
Keywords: Abia State, Customer Satisfaction, Developing, Entrepreneurial commitment, Founding, Inventing, New Product Success, investment Performance