Entrepreneurial Marketing in Small Firms: A Comparative Study of Small Software Technology Firms in Central Finland, Wales, UK and Silicon Valley, US

Abstract

This paper reports on present research of Entrepreneurial Marketing (EM) in small software technology firms (SSTFs) in order to investigate and compare the effects of ecosystems in three different countries and, the effect this has on a firm’s EM orientation and, on business growth. Firms today operate in a business environment characterized by increased risk and decreased ability to forecast while markets are uncertain, are fragmenting and becoming frictionless. Hence, firms interact as competitors, customers, and collaborators in a global, knowledge economy. Such changes have had an effect on marketing (Schindehutte, Morris and Pitt 2008) and reflect the type of marketing practiced in small firms, being informal, unplanned and non linear (Fillis 2002). That said, it is still possible to identify EM practices which may lead SSTFs to have sustainable business growth strategies. Indeed, there is growing interest in research at the interface between marketing and entrepreneurship (Bjerke and Hultman 2002; Hills, Hultman and Miles 2008) together with the importance of SME marketing, EM and Market Orientation (MO) for firm growth which is well documented in the SME literature (Carson et al. 1995). MO researchers recognise that firms who adopt other strategic orientations combined with MO are likely to perform better than firms adopting only a market orientation (Grinstein 2008). It is also suggested that marketing has much to offer the study of entrepreneurship as empirical evidence suggests that there is a significant correlation between a firm’s marketing and entrepreneurial orientations, both being responsible for business success. Currently, there have been few comparative qualitative studies which consider EM practices inherent in different business ecosystems. This paper addresses this issue by using the ‘EMICO’ framework developed in the earlier UK study (Jones and Rowley, 2009) which contains fifteen identified dimensions of EM and will enable exploration as to how EM is practiced in SSTFs, in different contexts. This will enable assessment of how and why such EM oriented behaviors may lead to sustainable growth in challenging markets.