Factors affecting sales growth of small and medium enterprises in Kampala: a case study of Kikuubo traders

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to investigate factors affecting sales growth of SMEs in Kampala, A case study of Kikuubo. Specifically, the study sought to find out the effect of gender, trader’s age, their marital status, education level, business type and advertisement on sales growth of small and medium enterprises. Kikuubo was selected to be the case study because of its huge influx of traders of different commodities, also due to the researcher’s desire to have a bigger sphere of respondents. This study employed a cross-sectional descriptive survey design; this was suitable to enable the researcher to collect data and report findings the way they were without manipulating results. A simple random sampling was used to select 50 respondents from the total population to participate in the study. Data obtained through questionnaires was processed and entered into the computer for analysis using descriptive statistics and inferential with the aid of Stata 15.0. Demographic factors such as sex, marital status and type of business were found to be independently related to sales growth of traders in Kikuubo market. Contrary, age of the traders which also depict age of business, education level and advertising were found to significantly predict sales growth of traders. The contingency table reveals that more males performed better than female traders. Married couples by far made more sales than the single traders, more households implied more labor force in the particular businesses. 92% of traders that had acquired higher education were performing better than those in other education levels. Traders operating wholesale and retail shops were performing two times more than the rest of the traders. 96% of the traders that advertised performed better than their counterparts that did not advertise suggesting that advertising was an effective means of sales promotion