Marketing problems and failures in Indian small scale industries

Marketing Issues for Small Industries

This study was conducted over a ten-year period and it is based on a survey of 101 small scale industrial units in India (Varanasi, India). The authors focused on the marketing "problems" that many of these small scale units face, although there are other problems relating to production, finance, and personnel matters. They claimed at the outset that this was an "empirical survey," important because the small scale industries in India are very important to the overall economy. And the authors claim that though employment is rising very dramatically (and output is also up), and the number of units has also risen dramatically, there are marketing problems that results in "opportunities lost" by these small firms.

What are the article's shortcomings and limitations? (Critique)

As to the assertion that the research is "empirical," the authors then seem to back away from the "empirical" description; on page 68 they say that the study is "fundamentally exploratory" and "descriptive in nature" (Jha, et al., 2010). And on page 69, they explain that the problems they disclose "may be taken as an illustrative not as conclusive form," which doesn't seem to a reader that this is truly an empirical research paper (Jha, 69). This may seem a bit petty but the authors' use of English shows a noticeable lack of sophistication. For example, on page 69 they write, "For example, since most of the entrepreneurs are shadowed by middlemen's." And, the entrepreneurs are "not very much serious with regard to ascertaining…" the consumer buying habits (Jha, 69).

(Critique) There are other gaffs in the narrative, and a reader can't feel really comfortable with the quality of the report if the quality of the narrative is a bit sketchy. Moreover, the article repeats the same themes over and over. They continually say how important it is that these small industries must have marketing plans. And the marketing plans that the industries do have include "…marketing objectives" but those objectives "are not based on suitable standards" and also, since the small scale industry leaders don't "…exactly know the customers," so how can they assess whether the customers are happy or not with their products (Jha, 70).

How complete and thorough job did the authors do?

Actually, reading through this article it seems that the authors generalize too much, they repeat their themes without arriving at a fresh conclusion, and they jump all over the map without focusing solely on their thesis. In fact in the conclusion the authors are discussing the growth of the economy in Italy. Italy? Most conclusions in peer-reviewed research articles zero in on the topic as introduced, and summarize the original thesis or introduction. It is hard to know exactly what was learned by the authors because they show no statistics or data on what the 101 surveys revealed; they only show generalizations of things that need to be improved upon.