Revista Internacional de Economía y Ciencias de la Gestión

Exploration of Entrepreneurial Marketing Orientation model among SMEs in Oman

Abstract

Essam Hussain Al-Lawati

Oman, administered by the Middle Eastern standards, is a middle income economy, where oil makes a larger contribution to the GDP of the country. Like every other nation in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Sultanate of Oman too has been adversely affected by the decline in oil prices over the past year. The country saw its revenues go down by more than 50% in recent years. Thereby Oman started to rethink its strategies. Presently Oman is into its vision Oman 2020, commenced in 1995 as a five year plan comprising series of goals for economic and social development. It comprises economic and financial stability, redesigning government’s role in the economy with the cooperation of the private sector, building a diversified economy based on national resources, globalization of the Omani economy, upgrading the Omani workforce and developing human resources. There is an upcoming concentration of entrepreneurship being injected into SMEs as a catalyst to achieve economic and social development objectives, including growth, innovation, employment, and equity. SMEs can manifest within an economy in a number of ways, and it includes both formal and informal economic activities for the purposes of creating wealth. Having understood the significance of SMEs and its role in economic development of Oman the present study is undertaken to explore the best orientation model that will enable entrepreneurs to rethink and implement the best entrepreneurial marketing strategies via SMEs at Oman. A sampling frame of eighteen units comprising SMEs, public sector, private sector and educational institutions was selected and an in-depth face to face semi-structured interview was carried out. Case study approach with an investigation of contemporary phenomenon from selected units was undertaken. Through this method various evidences were gathered from several sources like documentation, records, interviews, direct observation, participant observation and physical artifacts. Thereby the present paper explores and describes the phenomenon by qualitative content analysis through text interpretation method.