How brand-oriented culture and entrepreneurial orientation influence financial services SMEs financial performance? An empirical study

Abstract

This paper is aimed at examining the interplay between brand-oriented culture, entrepreneurial orientation, workforce motivation and the financial performance of SMEs in a selected services sector, that of the financial services industry and in the context of a Sub-Saharan African economy. The contributions of this article to the fledgling SMEs marketing literature are threefold. First, we show that a brand-oriented culture is positively associated with a service-oriented enterprise financial performance. Second, we provide empirical support that workforce motivation is a direct antecedent of both entrepreneurial orientation and financial performance of this set of service-oriented SMEs. Third, we show that the complementarity of brand-oriented culture and entrepreneurial orientation is a key predictor of SMEs financial performance. Our study equally shows that in terms of relative strength, the complementary effect of brand-oriented culture and entrepreneurial orientation exceeds the individual effects of both on SMEs financial performance. Arguably, ours is the first quantitative study to report this particular finding in the SMEs marketing literature. More importantly, we have offered some strategic insights that could help deepen practitioners' understandings on how they could go about unlocking more marketing opportunities in the marketplace and ultimately become more financially successful in a rapidly changing business environment that is fuelled in part by ongoing technological advances, changing consumers' preferences, and hypercompetition.