• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.11-30
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• 2016

The study specifically aimed to identify factors affecting business longevity. It focused on knowing how embroidery enterprises managed to persist in the industry for many years despite the competitive business environment. After discovering the significant relationships of such factors to longevity, problems experienced by the enterprise cluster were ascertained in order to come up with recommendations that can be proposed to the enterprise owners. Embroidery entrepreneurs have been experiencing a continuous decline in sales due to lack of innovation and intense competition. In the evaluation of their personal entrepreneurial competencies, they scored low on risk-taking, persuasion and networking, and opportunity seeking; thus, implying that these are their weaknesses. On the other hand, the statistical results of this study say that longevity is a function of the entrepreneur's competencies (i.e., persistence, commitment to work contract, demand for quality and efficiency, information seeking, and systematic planning or monitoring), the generation currently managing the business, competition, and the customer's preferences. These results suggest that these independent variables are significant and are deemed critical to business longevity. Thus, entrepreneurs have to find ways on how to use these competencies as an advantage in reinventing their businesses and in reviving their industry.