Understanding Rural Micro and Small Business Marketing Practices in Ghana

While previous studies find the argument that market orientation is generalizable to emerging economies and that the environmental context moderates the influence of market orientation on business performance, scholars are silent on market orientation strategies among rural micro and small businesses and impact on their performance. Our research studies 20 rural micro and small businesses using participant observation techniques and storytelling approaches geared toward elicitation of owner-managers’ oral accounts of their business practices and relationship with customers. We find evidence of the employment of market orientation strategies, albeit indigenous and informal, that contribute to livelihood development, poverty reduction, and rural economic development. The results show how these businesses cultivate customer loyalty through friendship with their customers. Competitor orientation is accomplished through customer-initiated intelligence-gathering efforts while inter-functional coordination occurs informally and ad hoc. Furthermore, rural micro and small businesses attribute their performance to their innovative strategies in surviving a competitive environment.