Putting Entrepreneurship into Marketing: The Processes of Entrepreneurial Marketing

This paper considers how marketing can be made more appropriate in entrepreneurial contexts by proposing a conceptual model of the processes of marketing as undertaken by entrepreneurs. Although marketing is a key factor in the survival and development of business ventures, a number of entrepreneurial characteristics seem to be at variance with marketing according to the textbook. These include over‐reliance on a restricted customer base, limited marketing expertise, and variable, unplanned effort. However, entrepreneurs and small business owners interpret marketing in ways that do not conform to standard textbook theory and practise. An examination of four key marketing concepts indicates ways in which entrepreneurial marketing differs from traditional marketing theory. Entrepreneurs tend to be “innovation‐oriented”, driven by new ideas and intuitive market feel, rather than customer oriented, or driven by rigorous assessment of market needs. They target markets through “bottom‐up” self‐selection and recommendations of customers and other influence groups, rather than relying on “top‐down” segmentation, targeting and positioning processes. They prefer interactive marketing methods to the traditional mix of the four or seven “P’s”. They gather information through informal networking rather than formalised intelligence systems. These processes play to entrepreneurial strengths and represent marketing that is more appropriate in entrepreneurial contexts, rather than marketing which is second best due to resource limitations.