The marketing strategies used by emerging building contractors in Polokwane Municipality, Limpopo

Abstract

This study explores The Marketing strategies used by emerging building contractors in the Polokwane Municipality which falls under the Capricorn district of Limpopo province, South Africa. It was motivated by the high failure rate of emerging building contractors. The aim is to identify and evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing strategies employed by emerging building contractors. Every business needs a winning marketing strategy to strengthen both its market position and presence. The high failure rate of emerging building contractors is of great concern to government, beneficiaries and the owners themselves. Research has shown that businesses with no clear-cut marketing strategy are prone to collapse. A case in point is marketing in the construction industry. Emerging building contractors have failed to compete adequately among themselves due to a lack of marketing skills, little or no knowledge of how to develop a marketing plan or its importance, insufficient capital, and a lack of access to markets. The respondents in the study were drawn from four important bodies in the construction industry in the Polokwane municipality, namely the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), the Limpopo Economic Development Agency (LEDA), the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) and the South African Women in Construction (SAWIC). It is required by law that all building contractors be registered with the CIDB. A quantitative method of data collection and analysis was used namely simple, random sampling to supply 75 potential respondents (33 women and 42 men). Two thirds (22 women and 28 men) of the 75 individuals were found to have active status on the CIDB register, while the registration of the remaining 25 had expired. Thereafter, descriptive ad inferential statistics were used to aggregate and correlate data. The results of this study showed that we do not reject null hypothesis H0, since (t (48) = 0.122, p=0.903) while mean and standard deviation of the marketing strategies are M = 24.16%, SD = 3.51%. The data indicates that the emerging contractors did not have marketing strategies all together. The findings of the study may assist the emerging building contractors to develop marketing strategies in order to enhance the construction fraternity and lead to growth and future profitability.