The influence of leadership skills, innovation, legal issues and marketing skills on success of SMEs in the informal sector at Siyaso business complex in Harare Zimbabwe.

Abstract

Prior researches have noted that there were number of issues affecting the Small and Medium Enterprise industry, including an unfavourable operating environment, lack of training and business development, limited financial resources, inadequate infrastructure and public utilities and an unfavourable legal and regulatory environment. There is a need to re-assess the SME’s key success factors, with a view to identifying a sustainable strategy for identifying the key focus areas, which contribute towards the development towards enterprise success. The conceptual framework was developed from the critical success factors for SMEs which are the independent variables while SMEs success is the dependent variable. Literature on key factors for success among SMEs, impact and applicability of identified key factors and sustainable business strategies for adoption by the Zimbabwean SMEs was reviewed. The survey research design was adopted and the quantitative approach was employed. Population for this research included all SMEs at Siyaso business complex in Mbare and probability sampling methods were employed to sample the population and a questionnaire was used as the data collection tool. Data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The Research found out that market factors make the most significant contribution to success of the SMEs. Also SMEs are failing to take advantage of innovation to grow their businesses, the sector is not properly confirming to legal issues for the sectors growth. SMEs sector does not have proper management capacity to grow the business and increase the chances of longevity and leadership capacity to grow the business. It is concluded that the sector does not have proper competitive advantage to grow the business. Survey recommends the means by which SME’s can increase their success is through aggressive advertising. There is need for SMEs to constantly analyse the industry trends which should aid them to review the changing market demand and therefore re-evaluate their marketing mix strategy to maximize profit based on the new opportunities created in the industry. SMEs are recommended occasionally undertake market researches and meet customer needs. Further research is recommended to evaluate the effects of brands and branding to the manufacturing industry of Zimbabwe with a focus on SMEs.