Abstract

The factors associated with small industrial business have a significant impact on their performance and they need to be determined considering their contribution to the business performance. This study aims to recognize a set of variables that have the paramount impact on the performance of small industrial business. It also constructs a statistical model that is used to estimate the probability of faltering for any small industrial enterprise, and to determine its expected survival time. It applies cluster analysis to classify depending on variables, i.e., faltering and non-faltering using Cox’s regression model. Incredibly, the obtained results show that (i) the most influential variables affecting the success or failure of a small industrial business are: establishment expenses, workers’ wages, and cost of marketing products, (ii) the maximum degree of risk to small industrial business was during the fifth, sixth and seventh years, and the average lifetime of a small industrial enterprise ranged from 8 to 9 years. The results indicate that stakeholders must consider the faltering variables when making business decisions and looking into the policies’ implementation after the ninth year of the variables’ adoption.