Entrepreneurship Education and Orientation as Performance Driver in Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises

Entrepreneurship education and orientation exposes students to the fundamental knowledge required for running a business successfully. Entrepreneurship education was introduced into Nigerian educational curriculum by the Federal Government of Nigeria in 2006 to enable youths acquire basic skills and knowledge for opening up their own small businesses. It finds expression in developing the foresight of the entrepreneur and his ability to take advantage of business opportunities unfolding in the business environment to create competitive value. Entrepreneurship education is one of the intervention strategies in line with global trend to refocus education towards solving the unemployment problem facing the world today.   Descriptive research design was adopted in this article. Structured questionnaire was used to gather primary data for the study.  A total of 60 questionnaires were administered to employees of Astral Water Limited, Surulere, Lagos.  However, only 53 questionnaires were correctly completed and returned to the researcher. Data collected through the questionnaires were analyzed with regression and ANOVA test statistics using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16. Two (2) hypotheses were formulated and tested in the study. The test showed that the null hypotheses of the two formulated hypotheses were rejected. The test of the two hypotheses provided resounding evidence to prove that entrepreneurship education and orientation serve as performance driver in small and medium-scale enterprises operating in Nigeria.  The study recommended that entrepreneurs should re-double their effort on the acquisition of entrepreneurship education and skills to make superior performance sustainable

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING AND CUSTOMER PATRONAGE: MODERATING ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL POLICIES : A Study of May and Baker Pharmaceutical Company, Ota, Ogun State

This article critically examined Relationship Marketing and Customer patronage deploying organizational policies as the moderating variable. The paper used May and Baker pharmaceutical company as the focus of the study.  So far, it has not been clear whether or not relationship marketing is a potent factor driving successful marketing programme in an organization. The objectives of the study were to ascertain the extent to which customer service influences customer satisfaction and to find out the degree to which organizational policies moderate customer purchase decision-making. The instrument used for gathering data for the study was copies of questionnaire administered to respondents that were customers of May and Baker. A total of 200 copies of questionnaire were administered and 174 were correctly completed and returned for analysis. Descriptive research method was adopted. Two hypotheses were formulated and tested in the study using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and regression analysis.  The results of the hypotheses tested validated the point that effective relationship marketing serves as a potent factor for achieving superior customer patronage and boosting business bottom-line. Nevertheless, organizational policies are to be streamlined in such a way that they do not adversely affect customer patronage. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that modern organizations should devote more time and attention to training employees to equip them with both hard and soft skills to deliver excellent relationship marketing in order to enhance business performance