Customer‐Value Based Marketing Activities in Fast‐Growth Firms

Abstract

This study investigates marketing activities in emerging/new fast-growth ventures. The main reason for undertaking this research concerns the dearth of marketing literature on fast-growth firms (FGFs). Despite the importance of marketing to FGFs, only one study (e.g., Hills & Hultman, 1999) has assessed the nature of marketing in these enterprises. This investigation proposes to fill this void. Research, in contrast, has concentrated mainly on large organizations (Vorhies & Morgan, 2005), and SMEs (Siu & Kirby, 1998). This line of enquiry has focused on specific marketing efforts, such as network marketing (O'Discroll, Carson, & Gilmore, 2000), marketing planning (Hill & McGowan, 1999), relationship marketing (Zontanos & Anderson, 2004) and word-ofmouth (WOM) marketing (Stokes & Lomax, 2002). Over ten years ago, Hills and LaForge (1992) called for investigations to incorporate firms with different characteristics to examine disparities in marketing relationships for new versus existing ventures, and small versus large firms, and to integrate marketing and entrepreneurship literatures. To fully understand SMEs and entrepreneurship, researchers need to take into consideration related variables (e.g., economies of scale, resource constraints) (Hills, 1999). We hold that different types of firms pursue diverse strategies depending on internal and external factors (Stokes, 2000).Recently, Tan and Smyrnios (2004) indicated that fast-growth SMEs possess learning, market, and entrepreneurial orientations: factors shown to be significant predictors of superior marketing capabilities and ultimately, firm performance. Their findings suggest that fast-growth SMEs invest in maintaining sound relationships with stakeholders and developing superior products/services for positional advantages, the marketing capabilities of which contribute significantly to firm performance. While

Does Entrepreneurial Marketing Underrate Competition?

“…These needs also refer to the discovery of opportunities that may originate through some form of environmental change, for example advances in technology, or by exploiting changes in the marketplace, for example the exit of a competitor (Miles et al, 2015). Consequently, we view that actions in entrepreneurial marketing comprise developing business network relations, ensuring publicity through various channels, and creating innovative offerings (Chaston, 1998;Hills et al, 2008;Lin & Smyrnios, 2007;Lodish et al, 2001;Whalen et al, 2016). In the following sections, we establish our research hypotheses.…”

“…Martin (2009) stresses the importance of communication, as well as the role of promotions and public relations. Marketing activities need to be complemented with appropriate promotional marketing suited to customers (Lin & Smyrnios, 2007) through, for example, exhibitions or participation in a fair (Bettiol et al, 2012). The Internet has changed timreview.ca…”

Positioning in SMEs: entrepreneurs’ perceptions and strategies

“…Applications of the concept of positioning have been extensively investigated in marketing and branding studies worldwide (Saqib, 2020), including the positioning of personal brands (Shafiee et al , 2010), sport brands (Lee et al , 2018), green brands (Wang, 2017), hotel brands (Hu and Trivedi, 2020) and city brands (Larsen, 2018), as well as in B2B contexts (Panda et al , 2018). However, few studies have focused specifically on SMEs’ positioning processes (Bocconcelli et al , 2018, p. 243); those addressing the strategic dimension of positioning in SME marketing and brand management (Lefebvre and Lefebvre, 1993; Tan Swee Lin and Smyrnios, 2007; Spence and Hamzaoui-Essoussi, 2010; Reijonen et al , 2012; Roach et al , 2014; María García-Pérez et al , 2014; Renton et al , 2015; Chen and Schiele, 2017; Muhonen et al , 2017; M'zungu et al , 2019; Dressler and Paunovic, 2021) are reviewed here to highlight characteristics of positioning approaches in SMEs compared to those of large companies.…”

“…Research on growing SMEs shows that they tend to adopt a more explicit market and brand orientation than their stable or declining counterparts (Reijonen et al , 2012). They invest more in their marketing capabilities (Joensuu-Salo et al , 2022) and target markets more precisely than slow-growing SMEs which are “trying to be 'everything to everyone'” (Tan Swee Lin and Smyrnios, 2007, p. 69). SMEs with a stronger competitive orientation are more innovative in the marketplace (Lefebvre and Lefebvre, 1993) and develop greater competitive advantages (Renton et al , 2015).…”

Exploring the interface of relationship marketing and export performance

“…Especially, relationship marketing has extensively been used as customer‐value based marketing activity by all types of companies (Tan Swee Lin and Smyrnios, 2007). Firms constantly face competition not only from existing competitors but also from new entrants.…”