Customer-centric influence of entrepreneurial marketing on business performance of hotels in Nigeria during the COVID-19 crisis

The ravaging COVID-19 pandemic has forced hotels in developed countries to adopt entrepreneurial marketing (EM) practices as a resilience strategy. However, there are few studies in Nigeria on how EM practices have been used in the hotel industry for their survival and growth. The study examines the customer-centric influence of EM on business performance of hotels in Nigeria during the COVID-19 crisis. Using a cross-sectional survey design, we collected primary data from 578 owner-managers and top managers of 66 hotels in Lagos and Yola in Nigeria using structured questionnaires. Respondents were selected based on the purposive sampling technique. The data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of statistical package for social sciences (SPSS Version 21). Three regression estimations are reported. The estimation in model 1 indicates that calculated risk-taking dimension has a significant positive influence on general performance, while the proactiveness, innovativeness, value creation, resource leveraging, opportunity to focus and customer intensity dimensions do not. The estimation in model 2 suggests that calculated risk-taking and customer intensity dimensions have a significant positive influence on revenue per room, while the other five EM dimensions do not. The estimation in model 3 indicates that calculated risk-taking dimension has a significant positive influence on market share, while the six EM dimensions do not. The owner-mangers and top managers of hotels should fortify and upscale the weak EM dimensions as a resilience strategy for recovery from the ravages of the COVID-19 crisis. We bridge the gaps in the literature by providing interesting insights into the potential value of the adoption of EM as a post-COVID-19 recovery strategy by the hotel segment of the hospitality industry in the developing context of Nigeria. We also validate the applicability of RBT in predicting the influence of EM dimensions on performance in the developing context.