CUSTOMER INFORMATION ON DECISION MAKING OF SMALL SCALE BUSINESS IN CALABAR CROSS RIVER STATE, NIGERIA.

This research explores the impact of customer information on the decision-making process of small-scale businesses in Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. In a bid to address the above topic, attention were paid to the following objectives: to examine the effect of action-oriented customer information on decision making of small scale businesses; to examine the effect of knowledge-enhancing customer information in decision making of small scale businesses; to examine the effect of symbolic customer information on decision making of small scale businesses. The statement of the problem was stated, from where research questions were structured to guide the researcher. Three research hypotheses were formulated. The descriptive survey design was used for the work, with the use of Taro Yamane formula, the sample size of two hundred and forty eight (248) respondents was arrived at. The descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while Analysis of variance was used to carry out the test of the null hypothesis. The findings of the research were that there is a positive but insignificant effect of Action-oriented customer information on decision making of small scale businesses; there is a significant and positive effect of knowledge-enhancing customer information on decision making of small scale businesses; there is a positive but insignificant effect of symbolic customer information on decision making of small scale businesses. The study concluded that action-oriented customer information has a positive but insignificant effect on decision making in small scale businesses. It was recommended that the study recommend that small scale businesses in Calabar as well as large and medium scale business make it a practice to always collect customer information. It was also recommended that small-scale businesses in Calabar and other places should adopt odern information and communication technologies in the process of collecting customer information.