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Introduction
Within marketing strategy, niche marketing can be viewed as a superior approach for small or specialised firms. Niche marketing is often understood as focused marketing towards a limited market consisting of a few customers and competitors, where the concepts of firm specialisation, product differentiation, customer focus and relationship marketing are frequently applied ([3] Dalgic and Leeuw, 1994). Niche marketing has further been reported to have been applied successfully by several firms throughout the world ([3] Dalgic and Leeuw, 1994) and is recommended as a viable strategic option for firms ([4] Dalgic, 1998; [19] Linneman and Stanton, 1991; [25] Phillips and Peterson, 2001).
Marketing strategy in general is supposedly the result of a firm's segmentation, targeting and positioning choices (STP process) at the level of the Strategic Business Unit ([29] Webster, 2005). This view is supported by traditional textbooks (for example, [16] Kotler, 2003), where this process is enforced as the core of marketing strategy. In other words, central aspects of marketing strategy involve the tasks of identifying and choosing who the desired customers are and how to get these customers to purchase the firm's offerings.
However, a niche firm often has limited resources in terms of financial capabilities, human resources and market information systems. Such resources are useful in order to find a profitable position and to stay competitive in the marketplace. Thus, this STP process may be too demanding to follow in its entirety. For an internationally oriented niche firm, the increased uncertainty through international exposure ([20] McAuley, 1993) further adds to the challenging task of handling the STP process.
There is some evidence in the literature suggesting that niche-marketing strategy is a popular alternative ([3] Dalgic and Leeuw, 1994). Further, this strategy seems to be beneficial for some firms, since such markets have been claimed to be more profitable ([19] Linneman and Stanton, 1991) and the increasing diversity in consumer tastes and habits and the changing needs of business and organisational markets seem to favour smaller, nimbler firms that can better tailor their offerings to the fragmented market ([4] Dalgic, 1998; [3] Dalgic and Leeuw, 1994). What seems to be lacking in the literature is knowledge about how niche marketing strategy is applied and which elements niche marketing strategy consists of. Managers...