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Audrey Gilmore: Reader in Marketing, Department of Marketing, University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland
David Carson: Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland
Ken Grant: Senior Lecturer, Department of Marketing, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Introduction
This paper advocates that networking is an inherent tool of marketing which is wholly compatible with SME decision-making characteristics in relation to marketing activities. After a brief overview of relevant SME marketing and networking literature, the research study aimed at understanding how SME owner/managers use networking in their marketing activities. The paper concludes by advocating that networking is a marketing "competence" and as such can be developed as a way of doing marketing for SMEs, that is, marketing by networking.
SMEs' limitations and marketing characteristics
It is well documented that SMEs have unique characteristics that differentiate them from conventional marketing in large organisations (e.g. Carson, 1990). These characteristics may be determined by the inherent characteristics and behaviours of the entrepreneur or owner/manager; and they may be determined by the inherent size and stage of development of the enterprise. Such limitations can be summarised as: limited resources (such as finance, time, marketing knowledge); lack of specialist expertise (owner-managers tend to be generalists rather than specialists); and limited impact in the marketplace. In addition, SME marketing is haphazard and informal because of the way an owner-manager does business; they make most decisions on their own, respond to current opportunities and circumstances and so decision making occurs in a haphazard and apparently chaotic way, according to personal and business priorities at any given point in time (Scase and Goffee, 1980). Clearly such limitations will influence, indeed determine, the marketing characteristics of an SME. SMEs do not conform to the conventional marketing characteristics of marketing textbook theories; instead their marketing is characterised by the limitations outlined above. Thus, SME marketing is likely to be haphazard, informal, loose, unstructured, spontaneous, reactive, built upon and conforming to industry norms.
Networking in SMES
For SMEs networking can mean using a variety of networks. The inherent existence of the owner/manager "networks" is built around their normal interactions and activities such as personal contact networks (Knoke and Kuklinski, 1982), social networks (Starr and MacMillan, 1990), business networks (Donckels and Lambrecht,...