Contributary measures to the successful marketing by the small contractors in Lesotho
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Date
2010-02-08T12:46:52Z
Authors
Mojakhomo, Motselisi
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Abstract
For any company to flourish, marketing has to be an integral part of its undertakings, and
this can be realised if suitable marketing tools are applied for clients to be motivated to
seek the firm’s services. Small contractors in Lesotho seem to have a problem marketing
their companies, hence it is within this context that a study was undertaken to establish
factors that contribute to successful marketing by these contractors. The research
hypothesis is that small contractors lack the awareness on marketing tools used in
services marketing, and to test the hypothesis, interviews with them were carried out so
as to acquire first hand information.
It had initially been identified from the literature review that there are three main
marketing strategies namely, differentiation, productivity and quality. Based on these, the
interview questions were drawn and the interviews conducted. The study was interested
in answering four questions namely:
1. What are the methods used to market the small contractors businesses?
2. How useful are these methods in realising the success of these businesses?
3. What are the constraints to the marketing process?
4. How do these small contractors overcome the marketing constraints?
At the end of the study it was found out that small contractors in Lesotho do adhere to the
prescribed marketing strategies but to a certain extent. The question on marketing
constraints was also answered and it varied greatly from what was presented by the
literature on marketing challenges. Ethics and codes of conduct seem to be the
dominating factors generally, whereas in construction marketing literature specifically,
financial constraints and untimely payments by client are the major challenges; these
were applicable to the small contractors sample in Lesotho.
The conclusion drawn from the study therefore were that the contractors are not aware of
most of the marketing tools hence their companies are not thriving as they should. Also
most small contractors lack finance hence they are not performing well. It was therefore
recommended that small contractors be sensitized on the issues of marketing on more
regular basis and the financial institutions in Lesotho, through government intervention,
create methods of funding small contractors.