| Summary: | Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are one of the essential approaches to economic
freedom around the world. However, SMEs can only uphold such a position when
proper marketing trategies and appropriate entrepreneurial behavior are exercised in
the right place and at the right time to gain positive effects on performance. Despite the
position of SMEs to the national economy in Bangladesh, it seems that numerous SMEs
failed to operate at the very early stage of setup or within a few years of starting their
operational activity due to lack of proper marketing strategy, inappropriate
entrepreneurial behavior, weak capital structure, as well as poor relationship with
customers. Consequently, the SME sector is under incredible strain, and it has failed to
provide maximum advantages and to minimize economic problems of Bangladesh.
Even though the significant effects of entrepreneurial marketing and relationship
marketing strategies on SMEs performance in developed countries have been observed,
the necessity of these strategy orientations is still overlooked by the researchers in the
underdeveloped and emerging countries, especially in Bangladesh. Thus, the aim of this
study is to investigate the effects of entrepreneurial marketing and relationship
marketing strategies' orientation on the performance of Bangladeshi SMEs, taking into
consideration of organizational culture and social media. This study used a quantitative
method, and a cross-sectional study was carried out through elf-administered
questionnaires. The target population of this study was the owners of SMEs' in
Bangladesh. Cluster random ampling was used to select 386 owners of SMEs as
respondents. Data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) through
the Statistical Package for Social Sciences-Analysis of Moments Structures (SPSS
AMOS) software version 25.0. This study found that entrepreneurial marketing
strategy, as well as the relationship marketing strategy, had significant direct and
indirect effects on the performance of SMEs in Bangladesh. It was also found that the
organizational culture of SMEs had a significant effect on the performance of SMEs in
Bangladesh. The mediation tests demonstrated that the organizational culture acted as
a partial mediator role in the relationship between entrepreneurial marketing strategy
and the performance of SMEs, as well as in the relationship between relationship
marketing strategy and performance of SMEs in Bangladesh, since both the direct
relationships are still statistically significant by the data of the study. Furthermore, this
study found that social media moderated the relationship between organizational culture
and the performance of MEs in Bangladesh. It can be concluded that entrepreneurial
marketing and relationship marketing strategies and organizational culture may affect
SME performance in the context of underdeveloped countries. The empirical findings
of the present study provide the basis for recommendations for SMEs in enhancing their
performance, and for policy-makers to design entrepreneurial support programs and
initiatives for SMEs.
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