Effect of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Profitability of Selected Quoted Consumer Goods Manufacturing Companies in Nigeria

Abstract

Consumer goods manufacturing industry managers find it challenging and difficult in constantly and continuously achieving targeted business performance indicators like profitability, market share, sales growth, competitive advantage and productivity resulting from global economic activities, unstable economic factors and open market competition challenges that are characterized with the consumer goods manufacturing industry. Deloitte Report (2020) showed that the deterioration in overall performance of consumer goods firms cuts across developed world. In emerging economies like China, Singapore, and Malaysia, Deloitte Report (2020) reported that consumer goods companies like food and beverages companies account for decline in profitability, low market share due to global competition and open market policies in China and Singapore. Like other developing regions, Nigeria consumer goods manufacturing industry has long been associated with substantial gaps in port, road, power infrastructure, poor supply network, high cost of manufacturing processes, input and output; not to mention its notoriously high levels of corruption and bureaucratic restrictions, which increase the cost of distribution and investment, thus cause the rundown of performance indicators such as profitability, market share, sales growth, competitive advantage and productivity in the Nigeria consumer goods manufacturing industry (Manufacturing Association of Nigeria (MAN), 2019).Ojeleye, Opusunju, and Abdullahi (2020) emphasized that part of the factor hindering growth and continuous performance in Nigeria consumer goods manufacturing industry relates to poor quality and non-availability of inputs in the local market, such as raw materials and equipment as well as limited size of the domestic market for manufactured products. One of the most widely used constructs to assess firm entrepreneurship is entrepreneurial orientation (EO) (Rezaei&Ortt, 2018). A firm is considered to be entrepreneurial if it is innovative, proactive and risk-taking and firm Akpa, Victoria O.