Necessity Entrepreneurs’ and Stakeholders’ Strategies: Bridging Business Survival in the Hairdressing Salon Industry

Abstract

Entrepreneurs specialize in increasing productivity and thus, contribute to the country's development and economic growth. The focus of the study is to investigate the extent to which necessity entrepreneurs’ and stakeholders’ strategies can enable the survival of small services and businesses such as hair salons. The argument is that hair salons that are created out of necessity may not be able to survive turbulent economic times. The paper argues that survival strategies may assist entrepreneurs to survive and grow in business. A positivist approach was employed and a sample of 144 was randomly recruited from hair salon business owners. The structured questionnaire was analyzed, yielding descriptive and inferential analyses with means, percentages, variances, correlation coefficients, regression analysis, and the Normal Q-Q plot used to analyze and explain the variables. The findings show a significant relationship between necessity entrepreneurship and business survival. This largely explains that they work assiduously for the growth of their enterprise. Necessity entrepreneurs influence economic development, and entrepreneurs create new businesses by helping in intensifying competition which assists in the growth of the business. Stakeholders influence the rate of necessity entrepreneurs’ survival. It is, therefore, concluded that hair salons build active participation with their stakeholders (customers, employers, community, and environment). Stakeholders are more willing to work with a business when they believe it is acting in ways consistent with its values. 

Received: 10 April 2023 / Accepted: 7 September 2023 / Published: 5 November 2023