Determining the enterprise success factors within a select group of retailing micro enterprises in Site C Khayelitsha

Abstract

The research identified Site C area of Khayelitsha, a township in the Western Cape province of South Africa, as the case study. Khayelitsha has an estimated population of 1.2 million people, and has about 22 sub-sections or areas. Khayelitsha is made up of old formal areas and new informal/formal areas. Site C, is an area which was built up around one of the old formal areas, and contains a high number of informal settlements, RDP houses, and informal backyard dwellers. The study’s primary objective is to identify what factors the business owners themselves regard as being critical for their own personal success, as well as that of the business they own. The secondary objectives were to determine what the make-up of these identified success factors were, and what their respective contribution was to the overall success of the business, as well as what interventions (if any) could make these identified success factors more effective. Qualitative data was requested from each of the participants over the various questionnaire development phases, to obtain a basic and detailed picture of each owner and their business, and to enable a detailed descriptive analysis of each participant. During the literature reviews of the Small Medium and Micro Enterprise (SMME) sector in South Africa, many sources identified the possible failure factors. These failure factors had extensive references to studies which focused primarily on the small and medium enterprises versus the micro enterprises component. The level of data available on micro enterprises indicated a significantly lower level of relevant data, than the data available on the small and medium enterprises component. The identification of the success factors is equally important as a valuable contributor to understanding the significant failure rate of start-up businesses within the SMME sector in South Africa. This thesis will consult literature studies that discuss these challenges. It will have an emphasis on the micro enterprise sub-sector within the broader SMME sector. The inequitable number of data between the micro enterprises and the small to medium enterprises is confirmed by the literature review. The core focus of the research is to hear from the established micro entrepreneurs themselves and what they identified over the course of their business existence, as being the key factors that enabled their success to date, as well as moving toward the future. The findings indicated that success factors are indeed identifiable from the entrepreneurs themselves. These factors included the education and training level of the entrepreneur, the entrepreneurial capacity of the entrepreneur, the access to financial resources, the specific business retail mix and the uniqueness of the specific business within its immediate locality.