Marketing Skills Needed by Self-Employed Building Craftsmen Inblockmoulding Industries That are Acquirable through Entrepreneurship Education in Enugu Urban

Abstract

Skill acquisition is to get new knowledge and expertise, which are needed and relevant for self-employed persons to provide products and services to customers at affordable prices with profits. Marketing Skills are necessary skills that involve such activities as advertising, presenting and selling of products and providing services to customers in the best possible way for profit purposes.  Entrepreneurship education is a crucial tool for solving the problem of unemployment and unemployables. Self-employed building craftsmen blockmoulders are persons with specialized skills in the building trades who are engaged in self-employed activities for improving their living standard and economic development. The purpose of the study was to determine the marketing skills acquirable through entrepreneurship education by self-employed building craftsmen for economic development. The area of the study was Enugu Urban where 90 self-employed building craftsmen were identified and used.  A research question with 17 questionnaire items guided the study. The mean was used to analyze data. The result of the study showed that self-employed building craftsmen blockmoulders needed to acquire marketing skills in order to set clear market goals, determine customers’ needs, choose the markets to serve, determine correct prizes, determine effective sales promotion strategies, introduction new products into the market, determine sales volumes, seasonal market fluctuations and maintain good credit management. Conclusions were drawn on the vital roles marketing skills could play in the self-employment activities of building craftsmen which are acquirable through entrepreneurship education. Recommendations were also made that entrepreneurship education should be included in the technical college curriculum for marketing skills acquisition; and that seminars and workshops should be organized by employment development agencies in the state through which marking skills could to taught to self-employed building craftsmen and that government should adequately fund entrepreneurship education at technical level so that its impact could felt within the society as the products engage in self-employment.

Keywords: Marketing Skills, Building Craftsmen, Self-employed, Entrepreneurship Education, Blockmoulders, Economic Growth and National Development.