Sales Promotion Strategies Required by Business Education Students for Customer’s Retention of Small-Scale Businesses in Rivers State

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate thesales promotion required by business education students for customer’s retention of small-scale businessesin Rivers State. Two specific objectives, research questions and hypotheses were posed and formulated for the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The population of the study comprised of four hundred and fifty-nine (459) third year business education students in Rivers State University (RSU) and Ignatius Ajuru University of Education (IAUE). 100 percent of the entire population was used as the sample and census sampling technique. A structured questionnaire titled: Sales Promotion Strategies Required by Business Education Students for Customer’s Retention of Small ScaleBusinesses Questionnaire (SPSRBESCRSSBQ) was used as instruments for data collection. The instrument was designed on 4points rating scale (strongly agreed = 4points, Agreed=3points, Disagreed = 2points and Strongly Disagreed = 1points) and used to elicit responses from the respondents. The instrument was validated by three experts two from the Department of Business Education in Ignatius Ajuru University of Education and one from Department of Measurement and Evaluation in Rivers State University for face and content validations. The reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha method which yielded a reliability coefficient index of 0.87 respectively. 450 copies of the questionnaire were retrieved and used for the analysis. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while t-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significant. The finding of the study revealed that business education students in RSU and IAUE acquired price discounts and coupon strategies for customers’ retention of small-scale businesses in Rivers State. The researchers therefore recommend that students upon graduation should be giving opportunity of real-life experiences through various small scale businesses to enable them perform efficiently in business