Marketing tactics of selected micro small businesses in the East London CBD area

Abstract

This study investigates the application of conventional marketing tactics of 93 hawkers in the East London Central Business District (CBD). Its focus is on what is being practiced in this informal trading environment from a marketing point of view. To this end the primary objective was to determine the extent of the use of generally accepted principles of common (conventional) marketing in primarily black owned or managed hawker businesses in the East London CBD area. Secondary objectives centred around the degree to which new or unknown marketing tactics were implemented and to identify any influencing factors and the relevance of these to marketing.

An in-depth analysis of the marketing environment of the hawker and East London region is depicted and the literature review of the relevant theory relating to the marketing of small businesses is covered and debated thoroughly.

A three section questionnaire covering demographic information (Section A), the extent of the use of researcher-identified generally accepted marketing tactics (Section B), and an open ended question identifying which marketing tactics and their ranking the hawkers used in order to achieve marketing success (Section C) was implemented through interviews with 93 hawkers in the East London CBD.

Although many of the individual questions results produced interesting statistics, conclusions from analysis of the composite results indicate a fair application of the marketing concept (29%) a slightly higher percentage applying the societal marketing concept (51,6%) and 38,6% of hawkers in the East London CBD applying the marketing mix.

The top 3 of 7 marketing tactics identified as being used to achieve good marketing performance were customer service, stall/product presentation and the offering of a discount or discounted pricing.

No significant correlations existed between the demographic statistics and the application of any particular marketing tactic.

The significant influencing factors noted were the hawkers zero tolerance for competition, the lack of any long term planning, no delayed gratification or building of capital and the strong need to belong to a group or association.

It was concluded that much needs to be done to investigate methods of improving the application of marketing tactics but more importantly to analyse the reason for many of their actions. Special attention is recommended to be placed on obtaining further insight and support for the observed influencing factors in order to be able to state them as fact.