INTRODUCTION
  1. Background to the Study
Marketing is the study of human activities directed at satisfying needs and wants through a profitable exchange. Strategy is borrowed from military literature which refers to a plan of action (Anyanwu, 2003). Of all business activities or functions, none is as interested in the consumer and his purchasing behavior as marketing. Marketing is invariably connected with the research into consumers purchasing behavior, namely what the consumers want, need, prefer and value, who are the prospective consumers and where they live, their income and mode of spending, how and why they make purchase decision and so on. In fact the influencing of the buyer behavior is the primary task of the marketing department in any organization (Inyanga, 2004).
Equally, marketing tries to define the right type of products in terms of the company’s objectives and attempts to make it available at the right place and at the right price, with the right promotions. This performance of marketing functions involves basically marrying consumer wants and with the appropriate products and services. It is the duty of the firm to adopt appropriate marketing strategy to attract customers to its products (Inyanga, 2004).
This is important because in a free market economy, the ultimate judge of the firm performance is the consumer. Consumer purchasing behaviour will determine the fate of the enterprise. This behaviour can best be described by a marketing manager who can also tell how he will be influence by market variables such as price, promotion, product variation and distribution and place.
Effective marketing strategy requires decisions that successfully integrate a firm marketing program towards satisfying the consumer whose act in obtaining and using goods and services, including his decision process that precede and determine those acts, are highly affected by the strategy adopted by the marketing manager in marketing the firm’s products (Kotler and Armstrong, 2006).
Since the performance of marketing functions involves basically marrying consumer needs and wants the appropriate product and services, and since it is generally believed that marketing begins and ends with the consumer, this project therefore attempt to examine how the use of marketing strategies have generated sales for small scale enterprises following its impact on sales performance . Efforts are therefore made to show the relationship between sales turnover and amount spent on marketing activities and its resultant impact on sales performance. We shall also concentrate on establishing how consumer purchasing behavior is influenced by a firm’s strategy for accomplishing marketing objectives and plans. Also, the designing of marketing mix strategy, centering on product strategy, distribution policy, pricing and promotional strategies will be examined.