Defining the scope of entrepreneurial marketing : a qualitative approach

Since the mid 1980s a steady stream of research studies have examined the marketing/entrepreneurship interface in SMEs. Whilst much of this work has concentrated on specific research issues surrounding the implementation of marketing in entrepreneurial SMEs, a focus of much of this work has been to establish the balance between the marketing and entrepreneurial orientations in such firms. Using a syncretised qualitative methodology the research reported in this paper draws on a sample of entrepreneurial SMEs in the agri-food sector. The research concludes that the entrepreneurial orientation is the dominant one and is particularly manifest in the strong sales focus of the companies studied. This suggests that, in entrepreneurial SMEs, it is perhaps, as so many studies have attempted to do, inappropriate to focus on determining the predominance of either orientation. Future research should instead focus on the interrelationship between the two in what is emerging as a distinctive brand of marketing, that is, entrepreneurial marketing.