ABSTRACT

This study is titled Brand Positioning Strategies and Sales Performance of Food and Beverage Manufacturing Entrepreneurs in SMEs Sector in Rivers State. It determined the predictive capabilities ofthe dimensions ofBrand Positioning Strategies (brand quality, brand benefit, brand price, brand delivery speed and brand packaging) on Sales Performance of Food and Beverage Manufacturing Entrepreneurs in SME Sector in Rivers State. The study adopted descriptive research design. Data were drawn through questionnaire from 66 small scale operators, 40 medium scale operators making a total of 106 food and beverage manufacturing Entrepreneurs in SMEs sector in Rivers State and 384 customers of the said firms. The data collection instrument was validated by experts drawn from Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Statistics and thereafter subjected to reliability test using Cronbach Alpha test which gave average coefficient value of 0.89. Combination of descriptive and inferential statistical tools were employed to analyze the data with the aid of SPSS (version 21.0). The descriptive tools employed were tables, frequencies, percentages, mean, and standard deviation while Pearson Product Moment correlation and regression analysis constituted the inferential tools employed for data analysis. The study revealed that, though with different levels of statistical interactions, all the dimensions of brand positioning strategies studied were critical in determining the outcome of Sales Performance. They were found to have significant predictive capabilities on sales performance. In conclusion, the dimensions of brand positioning strategies had significant statistical influence on sales performance of food and beverage manufacturing Entrepreneurs in SMEs sector in Rivers State. Precisely, 35.6%, 41.6%, 42%, 27.7% and 41.9% changes in sales performance were significantly predicted by brand quality, brand benefit, brand price, brand delivery speed and brand packaging respectively.Therefore, this study advocated full scale adoption of brand positioning strategies as it has the capacity to enhance sales performance.