Entrepreneurship

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For the person who starts a new organization, see Entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur, which is a French word meaning "one
who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations
into economic goods". This may result in new organizations or may be part of revitalizing
mature organizations in response to a perceived opportunity. The most obvious form of
entrepreneurship is that of starting new businesses (referred as Startup Company); however, in
recent years, the term has been extended to include social and political forms of entrepreneurial
activity. When entrepreneurship is describing activities within a firm or large organization it is
referred to as intra-preneurship and may include corporate venturing, when large entities spin-off
organizations.[1]

According to Paul Reynolds, entrepreneurship scholar and creator of the Global

Entrepreneurship Monitor, "by the time they reach their retirement years, half of all working men
in the United States probably have a period of self-employment of one or more years; one in four
may have engaged in self-employment for six or more years. Participating in a new business
creation is a common activity among U.S. workers over their course of their careers." [2] And in
recent years has been documented by scholars such as David Audretsch to be a major driver of
economic growth in both the United States and Western Europe.

Entrepreneurial activities are substantially different depending on the type of organization that is
being started. Entrepreneurship ranges in scale from solo projects (even involving the
entrepreneur only part-time) to major undertakings creating many job opportunities. Many "high
value" entrepreneurial ventures seek venture capital or angel funding (seed money) in order to
raise capital to build the business. Angel investors generally seek returns of 20-30% and more
extensive involvement in the business.[3] Many kinds of organizations now exist to support
would-be entrepreneurs, including specialized government agencies, business incubators, science
parks, and some NGOs. In more recent times, the term entrepreneurship has been extended to
include elements not related necessarily to business formation activity such as conceptualizations
of entrepreneurship as a specific mindset (see also entrepreneurial mindset) resulting in
entrepreneurial initiatives e.g. in the form of social entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship,
or knowledge entrepreneurship have emerged.
Marketing management
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Marketing Jump to: navigation, search

Key concepts
Product • Pricing Marketing Management is a business discipline which is focused on
Distribution • Service • the practical application of marketing techniques and the management
Retail of a firm's marketing resources and activities. Rapidly emerging
Brand management forces of globalization have compelled firms to market beyond the
Account-based marketing borders of their home country making International marketing highly
Marketing ethics significant and an integral part of a firm's marketing strategy.[1]
Marketing effectiveness Marketing managers are often responsible for influencing the level,
Market research timing, and composition of customer demand accepted definition of
Market segmentation the term. In part, this is because the role of a marketing manager can
Marketing strategy vary significantly based on a business' size, corporate culture, and
Marketing management industry context. For example, in a large consumer products company,
Market dominance the marketing manager may act as the overall general manager of his
Promotional content or her assigned product [2] To create an effective, cost-efficient
Advertising • Branding • Marketing management strategy, firms must possess a detailed,
Underwriting objective understanding of their own business and the market in which
Direct marketing • they operate.[3] In analyzing these issues, the discipline of marketing
Personal Sales management often overlaps with the related discipline of strategic
Product placement • planning.
Publicity
Sales promotion • Sex in
Marketing strategy
advertising
Promotional media
Main article: Marketing strategy
Printing • Publication •
Broadcasting
If the company has obtained an adequate understanding of the
Out-of-home • Internet
customer base and its own competitive position in the industry,
marketing
Point of sale •
marketing managers are able to make their own key strategic
Promotional items decisions and develop a marketing strategy designed to maximize the
Digital marketing • In- revenues and profits of the firm. The selected strategy may aim for
game any of a variety of specific objectives, including optimizing short-term
In-store demonstration • unit margins, revenue growth, market share, long-term profitability, or
Brand Ambassador other goals.
Word of mouth
To achieve the desired objectives, marketers typically identify one or
This box: view • talk • edit
more target customer segments which they intend to pursue. Customer
segments are often selected as targets because they score highly on
two dimensions: 1) The segment is attractive to serve because it is large, growing, makes
frequent purchases, is not price sensitive (i.e. is willing to pay high prices), or other factors; and
2) The company has the resources and capabilities to compete for the segment's business, can
meet their needs better than the competition, and can do so profitably.[3] In fact, a commonly
cited definition of marketing is simply "meeting needs profitably." [6]

The implication of selecting target segments is that the business will subsequently allocate more
resources to acquire and retain customers in the target segment(s) than it will for other, non-
targeted customers. In some cases, the firm may go so far as to turn away customers who are not
in its target segment.The doorman at a swanky nightclub, for example, may deny entry to
unfashionably dressed individuals because the business has made a strategic decision to target
the "high fashion" segment of nightclub patrons.

In conjunction with targeting decisions, marketing managers will identify the desired positioning
they want the company, product, or brand to occupy in the target customer's mind. This
positioning is often an encapsulation of a key benefit the company's product or service offers that
is differentiated and superior to the benefits offered by competitive products.[7] For example,
Volvo has traditionally positioned its products in the automobile market in North America in
order to be perceived as the leader in "safety", whereas BMW has traditionally positioned its
brand to be perceived as the leader in "performance."

Ideally, a firm's positioning can be maintained over a long period of time because the company
possesses, or can develop, some form of sustainable competitive advantage.[8] The positioning
should also be sufficiently relevant to the target segment such that it will drive the purchasing
behavior of target customers.[7]

Project, process, and vendor management

Once the key implementation initiatives have been identified, marketing managers work to
oversee the execution of the marketing plan. Marketing executives may therefore manage any
number of specific projects, such as sales force management initiatives, product development
efforts, channel marketing programs and the execution of public relations and advertising
campaigns. Marketers use a variety of project management techniques to ensure projects achieve
their objectives while keeping to established schedules and budgets.

More broadly, marketing managers work to design and improve the effectiveness of core
marketing processes, such as new product development, brand management, marketing
communications, and pricing. Marketers may employ the tools of business process reengineering
to ensure these processes are properly designed, and use a variety of process management
techniques to keep them operating smoothly.

Effective execution may require management of both internal resources and a variety of external
vendors and service providers, such as the firm's advertising agency. Marketers may therefore
coordinate with the company's Purchasing department on the procurement of these services.

Organizational management and leadership

Marketing management may spend a fair amount of time building or maintaining a marketing
orientation for the business. Achieving a market orientation, also known as "customer focus" or
the "marketing concept", requires building consensus at the senior management level and then
driving customer focus down into the organization. Cultural barriers may exist in a given
business unit or functional area that the marketing manager must address in order to achieve this
goal. Additionally, marketing executives often act as a "brand champion" and work to enforce
corporate identity standards across the enterprise.

In larger organizations, especially those with multiple business units, top marketing managers
may need to coordinate across several marketing departments and also resources from finance,
research and development, engineering, operations, manufacturing, or other functional areas to
implement the marketing plan. In order to effectively manage these resources, marketing
executives may need to spend much of their time focused on political issues and inte-
departmental negotiations.

The effectiveness of a marketing manager may therefore depend on his or her ability to make the
internal "sale" of various marketing programs equally as much as the external customer's
reaction to such programs

Reporting, measurement, feedback and control systems

Marketing management employs a variety of metrics to measure progress against objectives. It is

the responsibility of marketing managers – in the marketing department or elsewhere – to ensure
that the execution of marketing programs achieves the desired objectives and does so in a cost-
efficient manner.

Marketing management therefore often makes use of various organizational control systems,
such as sales forecasts, sales force and reseller incentive programs, sales force management
systems, and customer relationship management tools (CRM). Recently, some software vendors
have begun using the term "marketing operations management" or "marketing resource
management" to describe systems that facilitate an integrated approach for controlling marketing
resources. In some cases, these efforts may be linked to various supply chain management
systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), material requirements planning (MRP),
efficient consumer response (ECR), and inventory management systems.

Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of and marketing effectiveness various marketing
initiatives is a significant problem for marketing management. Various market research,
accounting and financial tools are used to help estimate the ROI of marketing investments. Brand
valuation, for example, attempts to identify the percentage of a company's market value that is
generated by the company's brands, and thereby estimate the financial value of specific
investments in brand equity. Another technique, integrated marketing communications (IMC), is
a CRM database-driven approach that attempts to estimate the value of marketing mix
executions based on the changes in customer behavior these executions generate.[9]