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ABSTRACT
Marketing is critical for small companies, but conventional marketing practices are not always available or appropriate. A nascent business venture is more likely to face uncertain market conditions and limited resources and the entrepreneur must use innovative approaches. This research links entrepreneurial marketing practices with changes in market share in small businesses. The findings indicate much support for the small businesses who face greater external or macro-environmental challenges utilizing more entrepreneurial marketing than small businesses that do not face external environmental challenges. Relative to internal resource challenges, however, entrepreneurial marketing is utilized by firms with more resources. Similarly, entrepreneurial marketing is associated with improved market share, particularly with less challenging internal or external environments.
Key Words for Indexing: small firms, performance, environmental competitiveness, environmental hostility, external environment
INTRODUCTION
While marketing plays a significant role in successful organizations, it can be argued marketing is even more critical for small businesses. For many small businesses, the loss or gain of a single customer can often determine firm survival. What has become increasingly apparent to researchers is conventional marketing practices are not always available or appropriate for entrepreneurial firms. The very fact of their newness means a nascent business venture is more likely to face both uncertain market conditions and limited resources. When pursuing new opportunities with limited resources, the entrepreneur must use innovative approaches in the face of such constraints. While the marketing approaches used by entrepreneurs reflect this innovative orientation, they may vary in their relationship or effect on outcome goals. It is critical that a new venture understand which entrepreneurial marketing practices are most effective, and therefore important to achieve a variety of successful outcome goals such as increases in higher profitability or market share. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to link entrepreneurial marketing practices with outcome goals for small businesses.
ENTREPRENEURIAL MARKETING
The term "entrepreneurial marketing" merges two formerly distinct disciplines and is used to describe the marketing processes of firms pursuing opportunities in uncertain market circumstances often under constrained resource conditions (Morris, Schindehutte, & LaForge 2002; Collinson & Shaw, 2001; Hills, 1987; and Omura, Calantone, & Schmidt, 1993). Entrepreneurial marketing utilizes a "big picture" perspective and focuses on creative approaches to innovation, risk management, resource leveraging and value...