Abstract:
Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) have been facing huge problems and
challenges to retain their customers for a long time with their firms. Despite their role as
major contributors to the country’s GDP, manufacturing industries have been suffering
from severe competitive pressure, where their functional activities are ad-hoc. The
customer, competitor, and inter-functional activities are prominent factors for the success
of the manufacturing institutions. This research attempts to prove how customer,
competitor and inter-functional orientation influence the performance of manufacturing
MSMEs in the Jaffna district. Quantitative research methodology and deductive research
approach are applied in this research. The population of this research is manufacturing
MSMEs in the Jaffna district and the respondents are the owners of MSMEs. This study
used simple random sampling to select the respondents and a total of 250 manufacturing
MSMEs are taken as the sample in the Jaffna district. Data were collected by using a
questionnaire from the owners of manufacturing MSMEs. The researchers tested the
influence of customer, competitors and inter-functional orientation on the performance of
manufacturing MSMEs by using the Structural Equation Modeling method. The result
shows that customer orientation, competitor, and inter-functional orientation have a
positive effect on the performance of the MSMEs. This result proves that competitor and
inter-functional oriented MSMEs improve the businesses while ensuring their survival in
today’s competitive economy. Findings further confirmed that customer orientation needs
to be enriched to improve the performance of MSMEs. This study is helpful to
manufacturing MSMEs by providing a clear idea about how customer, competitor and
inter-functional orientation helps to increase their performance of organizations. Thus, it
is recommended that by being the customer and competitor oriented, an organization can
ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty, retrieve new and potential customers, reach their
goals and consequently sustain their business.
