Contributary measures to the successful marketing by the small contractors in Lesotho

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.