Modelling the brand performance of SMEs in a fast-growing African economy: The complementary role of brand orientation and customer retention orientation

Abstract

Small and Medium-sized enterprises (hereinafter SMEs) are widely acknowledged by scholars and policy makers as the main engine of economic transformation, entrepreneurship and job creation in various economies of the world. Against this backdrop, we sought to theoretically conceptualize and importantly, empirically validate some of the pertinent drivers of SMEs brand performance in the context of a fast-growing African economy. To test the hypothesized relationships in the research framework, we adopted a positivist research paradigm, precisely a quantitative approach. More specifically, a variance-based structural equation modelling (i.e., PLS-SEM) was employed to test the research hypotheses. Briefly, our study suggests that when SMEs' executives are considering improving their brand performance, they should endeavour to leverage on a mixed business strategy, in this particular instance, the complementarity of brand orientation and customer retention drivers. Further findings, research contributions together with future research direction are discussed in the research paper.