Entrepreneurial Marketing Strategies During the Growth of International New Ventures

Abstract

The traditional marketing approach views marketing as a managerial process, and it emerged mainly from the focus on large, established companies (Kotler, 1997). Although the definition of marketing evolves and new approaches are being established researchers have, during the past two decades, pointed out that marketing theories may not be adequate for understanding smaller, younger and entrepreneurial firms (Carson and Cromie, 1989; Carson and Gilmore, 2000; Coviello et al., 2000; Hills et al., 2008). In dealing with these latter firms, researchers have emphasized the interplay of marketing and entrepreneurship and adopted a concept of entrepreneurial marketing (Bjerke and Hultman, 2002; Hills and LaForge, 1992; Hills et al., 2008; Morris et al., 2002). Entrepreneurial marketing can be seen as an umbrella concept for many of the emergent and innovative perspectives on marketing (Morris et al., 2002). It is positioned in the interface of entrepreneurship and marketing fields and is an approach for marketing under conditions such as environmental turbulence, complexity and diminishing resources (Hill et al., 2008; Moffit and Chiagouris, 2008; Morris et al., 2002). Although the international business environment as a context is certainly a turbulent and complex one especially for smaller, resource-constrained firms, research on entrepreneurial marketing in the international business of these types of firms is rather scarce.