Enhancing Smes Sales Growth Performance in Nigeria: The Mediating Effect of Market Promotion Practices

Market promotion practice has been identified as an important key ingredient for superior performance and global competitiveness in achieving Sales growth Performance in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria. The success or non performance of SMEs is said to rests in part on the nature and types of market promotion practices employed. This study investigated the effect of Market Promotion Practices on Sale Growth performance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Makurdi Metropolis of Benue state, Nigeria. A cross-sectional survey design was put in place for the study. The unit of analysis was organizations while the owner/managers of SMEs were the respondents. Systematic, simple random and snowbell sampling techniques were employed to collect the needed data for the study. A sample size of 401 SMEs covering all sectors that exist in the study area was drawn from a population of 1101 SMEs. Descriptive and Inferential statistics were used to empirically and statistically analyze the data collected for the study with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that Market Promotion has a significant positive effect on sales Growth performance of SMEs performance and are therefore good predictors of SME performance in Makurdi Metropolis of in Makurdi metropolis of Benue State, Nigeria. The study therefore concludes that Market Promotion has positive effect on Sale Growth performance of SMEs in the study area. It recommended (among others) that SMEs managers and operators should always employ appropriate market promotion practices for their firms. They should also regularly and effectively evaluate the market promotion practices employed to ensure they are positively impacting on their firm’s Sales Growth performance.