Effect of communication channels on success rate of entrepreneurial SMEs in the agricultural sector (a case study)

The present research aimed at investigating the effect of communication channels on the economic success of early profitable and entrepreneur small and medium enterprises in the agricultural sector. It was an applied research in which the descriptive-survey method was used. The research sample included 356 founders of entrepreneur small and medium enterprises (at the time of conducting the research) in the Markazi province, Iran, among which 100 founders were selected according to the Cochran formulation using the stratified random sampling method. A questionnaire was used as the research tool and its validity was confirmed as the face validity by a group of teachers and experts. The questionnaire’s reliability was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha (α = 0.82). The results indicated that the information seeking facilities of most of the entrepreneurs were seen at a good level (53 persons, 53%) and acquiring information from other businesses and consulting contacts with the neighbors and relatives, product sellers and promoting factors were listed as the highest priorities of the respondents, respectively. Also, there was a meaningful relationship between rate of using information and communication resources with the variables namely age, duration of operation on the job, number of people operating the business and number using loans. The results of regression analysis indicated that seven communication channels, promoters, other producers, product sellers, group visit, training films, creditors, radio and TV in the order of significance have defined 78.4% of the dependent variable changes.