Proceedings of Eurasia Business Research Conference
4 - 6 June 2015, Nippon Hotel, Istanbul, Turkey, ISBN: 978-1-922069-77-1
Exploring a Business Success versus Failure Factors for
Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in Saudi Arabia
Ahmed AL Saleh
This research is about the factors influencing on small and medium – sized
enterprises (SMEs) performance in Saudi Arabia to be successful business or not. It
was found that, year after year, the number of businesses that ceased trading is
increased; the majority of these are from the SMEs field, and their average age of
operation is between 3 and 7 years before ceasing to trade. As a result, there have
been a number of negative influences on the economy. Thus, the main aim of this
research is to explore and examine the factors that stand behind this occurrence to
provide a model that can identify the factors that assist small and medium sized
enterprises to increase the chance of successful and decrease the failure rate. This
have been reached through identifying the different factors that are producing from
inside the business and from the external environment, which may play an essential
role to effect on SMEs performance in the Saudi context. Data have been collected
by utilising a quantitative method, between 25 May and August 2014. There are 183
questionnaires have been analysed by using SPSS, 139 questionnaires with success
SMEs owners/ managers that made profits for the last three years, , and 44
questionnaires with small and medium sized enterprises owners/ mangers that did
not make profits for the last three years. A descriptive analysis was conducted to
identify the participants and business characteristics. Second, exploring factors
analysis was utilized in order to decrease large-scale variables into a more compact
factor base, and to explore the nature of the constructs influencing a set of
responses. Third, the logistic regression analysis have been examined to measure
the influence of the factors that constructed from the exploring factors analysis on
small and medium sized enterprises performance. The results of the logistic
regression analysis found that, using of information technology; owners/ managers
experience and relationship with others; the role of multinational firms in a host
economy; education level of owners/managers; the experience years of
owners/managers; nationality of owners/ managers; age of the business; and number
of employees, are statically significates and make influences on small and medium
sized enterprises performance in the Saudi market.
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Mr. Ahmed AL Saleh, Management Department, Manchester Metropolitan University, United
Kingdome, Email address: alsalehahmed@hotmail.com