Empirical Investigation into Target Costing and Competitors Focused Accounting Practices of Selected Firms in Oil and Gas Industry in Nigeria

The study is aimed at investigating the effect of target costing on competitors focused accounting on accounting practices of selected firms in the Oil and gas industry. Survey design was adopted for this study. Copies of questionnaires were administered to 128 sample respondents. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze data collected statistically at 5% or 0.05 level of significance to find out the effect of target costing on competitive advantage in oil and gas firms using difference in proportion, and in testing the hypotheses; Regression analysis was used, with the aid of statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) software. The test showed that target costing enhances cost advantage in the oil and gas industry, despite some teething problems encountered by firms in adopting the technique. The researcher recommends that internally, coordination and involvement of financial and accounting professionals is needed to implement target costing and a close monitoring of marketing and quality control throughout the entire process in order to be a success. Moreover, senior management team should support and pay more attention to application of target costing to achieve the substantial reductions in production costs to strengthen competitiveness