An Empirical Study into the Use of Differentiation Strategy in a Bid to Enhance Customer Satisfaction Amongst Sme Companies in Malaysia: Are Western Strategies Still Applicable?

 An empirical study into the use of Differentiation strategy in a bid to enhance customer satisfaction amongst SME companies in Malaysia: Are western strategies still applicable?[pic 1]

 (Author)

Yen Foo Soon (000919448)

 (Supervisor)

Mr. Vicknesh Thevendran

Master of Business Administration (International Business)
Project MBA IB (BUSI 1359)

Pathway Specialization Project’s Outline Structure

At

University of Greenwich
Business School
2017

1. Table of Contents

1        Introduction        2

2        Literature review        3

2.1        The SME sector.        3

2.2        Differentiation strategy        4

2.3        Customer satisfaction.        4

3        Research methodology        5

3.1        Introduction        5

3.2        Research method        6

4        Conceptual framework        6

5        References        7

1. Introduction

Definition of SMEs shifts crosswise over nations. In Malaysia, SMEs are characterized in light of two criteria, specifically number of full time employee and annual sales turnover of a business. In Malaysia, there is a lot of sector where SME can be found, for example, construction field, oil and gas, research and development, green technology, services, manufacturing and others (Demirbag, et al., 2006). It shows that a success SME will have a great impact and influence on economics and development on both on-going development and developed countries (Ahire & Golhar, 1996) SMEs with the number of 150 or less in full-time employee or the enterprise sales turnover of less than RM25 million is categorise in manufacturing and manufacturing-related service. If the employee is less than 50 or sales turnover is less than RM5 Million in the enterprise are consider as service or the other sector.

Table 1.1 New Definition of SMEs in Malaysia by size of operation

[pic 2]Sources: (National SME Development Council, 2013)

SMEs in Malaysia have been continuous transform itself to serve for a greater purpose, it all begin with a commodity-based and evolved into manufacturing base with producing lots of consumer goods. SME have been playing an important role, in order for the labour market to grow and create more opportunities for new technopreneurial in Malaysia. Through the research shows that WP Kuala Lumpur, Perak, Selangor and Johor own more than 50% SMEs. On the other hand, Sabah and Sarawak SMEs have 13.1% (National SME Development Council, 2013).