Entrepreneurial Marketing Essay

Entrepreneurial Marketing What is Entrepreneurial Marketing? “The proactive identification and exploitation of opportunities for acquiring and retaining profitable customers through innovative approaches to risk management, resource leveraging and value creation.” (Morris, et al. 2002, p. 5) Entrepreneurial Marketing Behaviour comes from Entrepreneurial Thinking

The entrepreneurial mind and its characteristics determine the domain of entrepreneurial marketing. According to Miller & Friesen (1983) and Covin

& Slevin (1994) and in contrast to non-entrepreneurial managers, entrepreneurs have been viewed as:

• innovative

• calculated risk takers

• proactive

• opportunity-oriented (Kirzner, 1973)

Entrepreneurial marketing vs traditional

Also one of the main things which differentiates Entrepreneurial Marketing from traditional marketing is that they develop their product, ideas first (bottom up approach), before they find their target audience, segments etc. Whereas traditional marketers try to find their target audience, target market first (top down approach). And then develop their product. (Stokes, 2000) When the entrepreneur has identified a possible market , they then test it through the trial and error process, and then the needs of customers is served by the company. And then expands as the entrepreneur has direct contact with the customers finding out their preferences and needs. However this process is not often deliberate as new customers are as a result of recommendation. This means that the target market is formed by a process of evaluation and self-selection. (Stokes,

Also SMEs rely more on innovation networks, this is in order to build up their knowledge-capital.

In relation to the above, Bianchi et al (2010). Stated that the reason why SMEs rely on more on external source of knowledge is the same as for bigger companies. This means that as competition is based on innovation, product and technology development process. Therefore for it becomes more difficult for them to develop new product and technology by themselves (Bianchi et al. 2010).

However Hills, (1995) says: SMEs are different and more successful than the larger firms; this is partly because as marketing implementation is more important than planning and strategy. Other authors such as O’Dwyer, Gilmore and Carson, (2009) have stated that SMEs naturally have a good customer Orientation which is necessary for survival in a competitive market , this therefore shows that marketing ideas are being used even when they are not understood as ‘marketing’ or ‘customer relationship marketing’, but as ‘networking’ or ‘keeping customers happy’

Best practice methods of