Abstract:

Due to the increasing rate of unemployment among the youth, especially school graduates in many countries of the world (both developing and developed) and its resultant negative effects on the society, many countries now emphasize entrepreneurship training for their citizen as a means of reducing the unemployment problem. This is laudable especially for developing countries with high population but low level of industrialization. However, encouraging people to acquire vocational or technical skills in order to establish their own business can only provide permanent solution to unemployment if the entrepreneurs are well equipped with marketing skills to make their business relevant for a long period of time rather than a short period as statistics have shown that as high as 80% of small business fail during their first five years. The high rate of business failure would only compound the unemployment situation rather than solve it. Although there are many reasons why these businesses fail, but the writer is of the opinion that inadequate market research and planning resulting from little knowledge of marketing by business owners is mainly responsible for the failure of their businesses. This paper therefore discusses the meaning, functions, and importance of marketing in a business organization and recommends comprehensive marketing training for potential and current entrepreneurs as this is believed to be capable of reducing business failure greatly.

Keywords: unemployment, Entrepreneurship, Vocational/Technical Skills, Marketing, Business failure.

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