Are Smaller Manufacturing Enterprises (SMEs) Ready to Do Business With Sophisticated Buying Organizations (SBOs)? A Profile of Selected Marketing Policies and Practices of 1690 SMEs

This paper examines selected marketing practices of nearly 1700 smaller manufacturing enterprises hoping to become Wal-Mart vendors. Unfortunately, the data suggests that many are not ready to do business with sophisticated buying organizations, such as Wal-Mart Stores, with notable deficiencies occurring in marketing planning and organization, pricing practices, sales forecasting, promotional planning and competitive product analysis. In fact, management practice deficiencies appear to be a more significant shortcoming than product-related issues.