The relationship between marketing practices, capabilities, orientation and performance of the service sector small medium entreprises in Pakistan

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between marketing practices, capabilities, orientation and performance of the service sector Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan. The data was collected from 240 randomly selected samples of SMEs in Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad. The three cities were selected because they contributed the highest revenue to the country Gross Domestic Products. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. The results showed that marketing practices, marketing capabilities and market orientation together explained 41.4 percent of the variance in the firm performance. Results of the study illustrated that marketing is weakly correlated to service sector SMEs of Pakistan, as marketing decision makers are not fully viable to marketing and its aspects due to their financial limitations. Therefore, it can be concluded that the study provides the idea that marketing practices, marketing capabilities and market orientation can jointly improve the firm performance by effective use of marketing information and trends. The implication of the study is that marketing managers should exploit the opportunities regarding customers, competitors and transform the information to apply marketing practices and build marketing capabilities.