SERVICES MARKETING AS A WAY OF ENSURING THE SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES COMPETITIVENESS IN EU

This article aims to highlight the importance of the competitiveness of SMEs in the European Union. The attention is focused on the marketing tools use of SMEs in the area of services business. The theoretical part of the paper determinates the basic problem area as services marketing. The main objective of this paper was to characterize the marketing behaviour of small and medium enterprises in the services market within the elements of the marketing mix 4P with emphasis on ensuring their own competitiveness. The primary marketing research using the method of questioning was realized to ensure adequate data. 192 companies were involved in marketing survey, 66 % of micro companies up to 10 employees, 23 % of small companies up to 50 employees and 11 % of medium-sized companies up to 250 employees. Only 22 % of companies consider the change of product offerings in order to increase their competitiveness. The vast majority of surveyed companies (73 %) don't consider price changes of services and 78 % of companies don't consider distribution strategy changes to improve the competiveness of their business. Micro, small and medium-sized companies extensively use the brand (company name), logo in communication with customers to differentiate from the competition.