The small business sector in today‘s world is considered seriously by researchers, scholars, policy-makers and governments as an important answer in addressing problems of unemployment, poverty alleviation, and redistribution of wealth. Promoting and encouraging the development of the small business sector is without any doubt a key factor for economic growth. However, this sector faced a high rate of businesses failure due to the many challenges among them, for example, the lack of marketing strategy and implementation in the conduct of the business. Several researches show the important role of marketing in a business but unfortunately it is still not a strong component in many organisations especially within the small business sector.For this reason the aim of this study was to investigate the difficulties experienced by small business managers in marketing their businesses. Taking the aim of this study into consideration, the primary objectives were to firstly look at the practice of marketing in small businesses and secondly to identify the difficulties of marketing experienced by small business managers.The literature study provided a brief overview of the small business sector, followed by a presentation of the practice of marketing in an organisation especially within small business enterprises. Moreover a discussion of the difficulties experienced by small business managers in marketing their businesses was also addressed through the literature review. The literature classified those difficulties into two types; (a)internal factors (lack of marketing planning and strategy, cost of marketing, lack of marketing expertise, perception of marketing) and (b) external factors (lack of knowledge of the market environment).The empirical study was conducted to evaluate the practice of marketing in small businesses and to see what marketing difficulties were experienced by small business owners and/or managers. Data were collected by means of a survey, using a questionnaire. Respondents were identified using the snowball sampling technique through the database of the Nelson Mandela Bay Chamber of Commerce. The data gathered from 67 usable questionnaires were analysed and interpreted. The results of the empirical study revealed that the biggest problems experienced by small business managers in the sample were the heavy cost of marketing followed by the lack of marketing expertise and finally the lack of marketing segmentation strategy. This study contributes to the enhancement of the literature on small business marketing with a focus on the difficulties experienced by owners and/or managers in implementing marketing. As a result this study presents recommendations and suggestions to assist managers in marketing their businesses.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) significantly contribute to the growth of the economy and the employment sector. However, it is indicated that SMEs lack access to the financial products and services that are critical to their growth. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to investigate the difficulties experienced by small businesses in accessing finance. An online questionnaire survey was considered an appropriate measurement method for this study. The targeted population of the study included all small businesses operating in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropole. Thus, some 208 companies were identified as part of the study sampling frame. A total number of 66 questionnaires were returned out of the 208 targeted companies - giving a response rate of 29 percent. The quantitative data were processed using a STATISTICA program, leading to appropriate descriptive statistical analyses, including frequencies, means, medians and standard deviations. In order to obtain a better understanding of the difficulties experienced by small businesses in accessing finance, hypotheses were also formulated and a t-test was used to establish the statistical significance of certain demographic variables and company characteristics regarding the problems experienced by small businesses in accessing finance. The results of the empirical study revealed that the major difficulties faced by small businesses in their access to finance were the lack of collateral and security, the high cost of borrowing interest and the delay in feedback from the financial institutions. Further, by testing the hypotheses, it was also revealed that the ethnic group of the applicant, the total years of business experience of the applicant and the annual turnover of the business have an impact on the access to finance. Based on the relevant literature study and the empirical results, recommendations were made in order to address the identified problems. However, the unavailability of an exhaustive small business database in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropole did not allow the research to draw on a larger representative sample. Thus, this limitation has impeded in-depth statistical analysis that would have allowed the research to obtain more accurate findings. Further studies could investigate the reasons why in many cases financial institutions reject the funding of small businesses.

Most multilevel marketers lose money and quit within the first year of operations because of a lack of effective strategies for building and retaining a productive downline. The purpose of this multiple case study was to apply Cantillon's entrepreneurship theory to explore strategies used by 3 multilevel marketers from 3 different multilevel marketing companies with operations based in New York. Participant selection was purposeful and based on the number of years the participants had been in multilevel marketing and their generated income. Data collection occurred through semistructured interviews with open-ended questions of the participants and a review of company training documents and videos. Data from the interviews and training were examined, and key ideas were documented and analyzed using a 6-step data analysis process, including listing and grouping the collected data, considering all data before reducing or eliminating any, grouping the data by research questions, formulating the data into themes, documenting the experience, and presenting the data findings. Three themes emerged from the data: entrepreneurial mindset, strong leadership and support, and training and development. Adopting strategies described in this study may contribute to social change by increasing the success rate among multilevel marketers, thus reducing unemployment, resulting in more taxable income and increased tax revenue, and producing a positive effect on the economy in New York area.

The federal government has been inconsistent in meeting the mandated contracting set-aside goals of 3% to aid service-disabled veteran small business owners. Guided by the general systems theory, the purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to explore what strategies an owner and 2 senior managers of a small service-disabled veteran-owned business in the Washington, DC metropolitan used to obtain federal contracts. The owner and senior members represented those responsible for strategic vision, development of business opportunities, and the company acquisition process. Data were collected from semistructured face-to-face interviews and corporate documents. Member checking and transcript review were completed to strengthen trustworthiness of interpretations of the participants' responses. Based on the methodological triangulation of the data sources collected, 6 themes emerged from the data analysis as key strategies to obtain federal contracts: business practices, business development of opportunities to attain growth, marketing to obtain opportunities to bid, networking to gain industry knowledge on trends and markets, understanding federal government contracts which emphasized the federal acquisition system access and availability of procurement information, and contract bidding which emphasized the importance of solution development. The findings from the study may contribute to social change by providing insights and strategies for service-disabled veteran small business owners in sustaining profitability through obtaining government contracts. The data from this study may contribute to the prosperity of the veteran small business owners, their employees, their families, and local communities.

Research suggests that children of self-employed parents and children belonging to family businesses are much more likely to pursue entrepreneurial careers. But while nature is a critical driving force behind intergenerational entrepreneurship, nurture seems to be even more important. The next question, and the overarching goal of this dissertation, is how do enterprising families – defined as families who own more than one business, but don't necessarily do so together – nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs? Of particular importance to discovering the process of intergenerational entrepreneurship, is understanding why some siblings follow an entrepreneurial path while others actively avoid it. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, 35 family members across eight enterprising families were interviewed. The findings suggest a critical determinant of who becomes an entrepreneur is based on children's entrepreneurial sensemaking, which they form throughout their experiences in childhood and adolescence. Child-specific characteristics, such as entrepreneurial innateness, as well as the presence of family system facilitators, were critical factors that influenced the valence of children's entrepreneurial sensemaking (i.e., negative, positive, balanced), which in turn influenced their career trajectories (i.e., never entrepreneurs, legacy entrepreneurs, open professionals). These findings have important practical implications for the sustainability of enterprising families.