Effect of Service Marketing Mix Strategy on Performance of Proprietary Patent Medicine Vendors (PPMVs); Moderating Role of Learning Competence

The success of MSMEs to the Nigerian economy is below expectation; the proprietary patent medicine vendor is not left out in terms of failure. Some scholars and professionals have attributed their failure to poor marketing mix strategy, and some attributed it to learning competence. Thus, this has prompted scholars and professionals to reexamine the determinants of MSMEs success. This study, therefore, examines the effect of service marketing-mix strategy on success of proprietary patent medicine vendors and incorporate learning competence as a moderator due to the inconsistence in the results of previous research on marketing mix strategy. A cross-sectional survey design using primary data was adopted for the study using structured questionnaire; and the unit of analysis is the owner/managers of patent medicine store in Zaria metropolis Kaduna state. The study employed simple random sampling technique to select the sample size of two hundred and forty-two (242) registered patent store. In order to test the proposed hypotheses of the study and to examine the relationships involving the moderating effects, both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyze the data collected using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) for window version 23 and Partial Least Squares (PLS) Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) path modelling using Smart PLS 3.2 software. The study revealed that learning competence moderates the relationship between service marketing mix strategy and performance. The study, therefore, recommends thatpatent medicine vendors should seek more knowledge in related fields for better performance.