Marketing challenges faced by women entrepreneurs with special reference to small and medium scale entrepreneurs

Abstract

Women Entrepreneur is a person who accepts challenging role to meet her personal needs and become economically independent. However, researchers have found that women are generally weak at marketing their products and finding customers. So, the main problem of this study is to analyze the Marketing Challenges faced by Small and Medium scale Women Entrepreneurs when selling thier products in the competitive market place. The research was carried out in Matara district and Primary data were collected from a sample of 100 Women Entrepreneurs by using a positively ranked five point lickert scale. Sample was selected on the basis of criteria that they are maintaining their own business and are engaging in marketing activities. Basically, the marketing challenges were measured based on six variables as Challenges related to the Product, Pricing, Placing, Promotion, Networking and Competition. After feeding data into SPSS package, findings were analyzed quantitatively. Based on the analysis results of Entrepreneurs, it was found that Small and Medium scale Women Entrepreneurs are facing six basic Marketing Challenges when selling thier products in the competitive market place. This idea is proved by the statistical mean values closer to 2 for all the 17 items represented by the six basic variables. Further, the Cronbach's Alpha values highlighted that the scale is reliable and the six variables are properly measured by the 17 dimensions.