An exploratory study on Mom and Pop shops : surviving the trade.

Abstract

In a challenging business landscape that is constantly evolving, small businesses have seen little incentive to continue or survive their trade effectively, a situation that resounds globally today. Due to the volatile nature of the industry, small businesses also tend to have differing degrees of success. This can be attributed to the fact that most business owners often “do not have a clue of how to run a business and have no underlying appreciation of business fundamentals drivers behind changes” (Barron et al, 2007).

Their inability to react effectively to change and accept it as part of business fundaments has greatly affected their profitability, which is further worsened by the proliferation of more “Big Box” retailers that have gradually turned small businesses irrelevant. In addition, the swift pace of changes in macro-sociology trends such as demographics shifts, IT evolution and transportation networks has also hastened the decline of small business owners (Haltiwanger et al, 2010)