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Entrepreneurial marketing: Moving beyond marketing in new ventures

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DOI: 10.1504/IJEIM.2010.029766

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Int. J. Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management , Special Issue 1

Entrepreneurial Marketing: Moving beyond Marketing in

New Ventures

Sascha Kraus*
University of Liechtenstein, Fürst-Franz-Josef-Strasse, LI-9490 Vaduz,
Liechtenstein & Utrecht University, Janskerkhof 12, NL-3512 BL Utrecht,
The Netherlands
Email: sascha.kraus@hochschule.li/s.kraus@econ.uu.nl
*Corresponding author

Rainer Harms
University of Klagenfurt
Department of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship,
Universitätsstrasse 65-67, A-9020 Klagenfurt, Austria
E-mail: rainer.harms@uni-klu.ac.at

Matthias Fink
Vienna University of Economics & Business Administration, RiCC,
Augasse 2-6, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
E-mail: matthias.fink@wu-wien.ac.at

Abstract: This paper discusses an alternative conceptualization of

Entrepreneurial Marketing that can be understood as “marketing with an
entrepreneurial mindset”. By combining the definition of marketing of the
American Marketing Association (AMA) and two conceptualizations of
entrepreneurship (entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial
management), we arrive at a definition of Entrepreneurial Marketing as
the the organizational function of marketing by taking into account
innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness and the pursuit of opportunities
without regard for the resources currently controlled. This definition must
not be restricted to young and small ventures, but can equally be applied to
larger firms. We illustrate the concept of Entrepreneurial Marketing by
highlighting Guerrilla Marketing, Buzz Marketing and Viral Marketing.

Key words: Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Marketing,

Buzz Marketing, Guerrilla Marketing, Viral Marketing

Bibliographical notes:
Sascha Kraus is Professor for Entrepreneurship at the University of
Liechtenstein and at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Besides, he is
Asc. Senior Researcher at the Vienna University of Economics &

Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

 S. Kraus, R. Harms and M. Fink

Business Administration, Austria and Associate Member at the Newcastle

University’s Centre for Knowledge, Innovation, Technology & Enterprise,
UK. Before his current positions, Prof. Kraus was Evald and Hilda Nissi
Foundation International Fellow at the University of Vaasa, Finland and
Substitute Professor at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences,
Austria.

Rainer Harms is Assistant Professor at the University of Klagenfurt,

Austria. Moreover, he lectured on Entrepreneurship at the Technical
University of Berlin and the University of Dortmund. He studied
economics, politics and sociology at the University of Münster, Germany,
where he received his Ph.D. in business administration with a thesis on
entrepreneurial management. His current research interests revolve around
a critical analysis of new venture development and organizational aspects
of innovation management.

Matthias Fink is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Small Business

Management and Entrepreneurship at the Vienna University of Economics
and Business Administration where he received his Ph.D. He holds a
triannual scholarship (APART - Austrian Program for Advanced Research
and Technology) granted by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Main
fields of research: interorganisational co-operation, trust in the economic
context, internationalisation of SMEs, communal entrepreneurship and
entrepreneurial marketing.

1 Introduction
The term “Entrepreneurial Marketing” (EM) has come to describe the
marketing activities of small and new ventures. As such, EM has
developed within a vibrant and promising fresh field of research. While
the analysis of marketing in new and small ventures is an important issue,
given the large share of economic activities that can be attributed to these
kinds of firms, we argue that EM is more than that: it can also describe
marketing activities with an entrepreneurial mindset, irrespective of firm
size or age. EM research might want to explore the idea that EM can be
implemented regardless of firm size or age in order to broaden the scope
of the field.
First, starting with the presuppositional knowledge that
entrepreneurship is often conotated with innovativeness and risk-taking,
business reality shows that most new ventures are in fact not very
innovative, but rather imitative. For example, according to the ZEW
(2007), only 6-7% of all new ventures of a founding cohort are
 Entrepreneurial Marketing: Moving beyond Marketing in New Ventures

technology-oriented ventures, i.e. founded to exploit the technological

knowledge of its founders (Klofsten, 1997). Most small business
entrepreneurs are not very risk-oriented either. Bhidé (2000) points out
that for most entrepreneurs, the best business would be a mailbox that
customers send money to. In reality, most ventures start with an
established business idea in an established market. Hence, to bestow the
adjective “entrepreneurial” on the type of marketing that is associated with
new ventures in general might overstretch the meaning of EM.
Second, by labelling the marketing behaviour of all new ventures as
“entrepreneurial”, one implies that the marketing activities of larger firms
are not. However, there are a number of examples from large firms that
use marketing in an innovative and sometimes even risky way, which will
be illustrated in section 2.4 with the example of several “entrepreneurial”
promotion tactics.
Now that we have argued what EM is not, we would like to argue what
EM might be. Accordingly, the remainder of this paper is organized as
follows: First, we argue that because of the heterogeneous interpretations
of both domains – entrepreneurship and marketing – it is difficult to come
up with a “standard” definition of EM that is widely agreed upon. Second,
we argue that the term “entrepreneurial” might be interpreted as a strategic
orientation influencing the organizational function of marketing. Thus,
“entrepreneurship” is an adjective that describes an approach to marketing
that embraces the opportunities of the marketplace in terms of an effective
implementation of price, place, promotion, and product tactics (4p) by
being risk-taking, innovative, and proactive. Then, we argue that
marketing in new and small ventures faces some challenges that may be
overcome with an entrepreneurial approach to marketing, while others
may not be. Finally, we illustrate the concept of “entrepreneurial
marketing” by highlighting the most important entrepreneurial marketing
activities pertaining to promotion such as guerrilla marketing, viral
marketing, and buzz marketing. We conclude our article by suggesting
entrepreneurial approaches to marketing in other fields and by outlining
future research options.

2 Definitions and Nature of Entrepreneurial Marketing

Definitions of Entrepreneurial Marketing

EM seems to be a concept which so far has been hard to grasp. Morris et

al. state that “the term ‘entrepreneurial marketing’ has been used in
 S. Kraus, R. Harms and M. Fink

various ways, and often somewhat loosely” (2002, p. 4). A potential

reason for this difficulty might be that each concept can be interpreted in
many different ways. Hence, there might be many possible combinations
of the conceptualizations of entrepreneurship and marketing, and their
interrelations.
With regards to entrepreneurship, Gartner (1990) asked the question:
“What are we talking about when we talk about entrepreneurship?” in
order to discover the underlying meanings and to approach the content
validity of the concept of entrepreneurship. In his analysis, heterogeneous
issues such as value creation, organization creation, growth, innovation, or
the personal and governance aspects of the entrepreneur appeared. About
10 years later, Low (2001) still characterized the field of entrepreneurship
as a “potpourri” of weakly related topics, a situation that still pertains to
entrepreneurship research (Harms & Grichnik, 2007). However, there
might be a silver lining. Pertaining to firm-level entrepreneurship, the
conceptualizations of entrepreneurial orientation (EO; Miller, 1983) and
entrepreneurial management (Brown et al., 2001) are widely debated (for
example at the Academy of Management 2008 Professional Development
Workshop on “The questions we ask about the Entrepreneurial Orientation
construct”).
According to these perspectives, entrepreneurship might be regarded
as a strategic orientation (Venkatraman, 1989), which is related to the
interpretation of strategy as perspective (Mintzberg, 1987). Such a
perspective might influence strategies as plans (intended actions) and
strategies as ploys (realized action). Such a strategic orientation can have
different characteristics. For example, the literature discusses orientations
such as quality orientation (Buzzell & Gale, 1987, Kotler & Armstrong,
1994, Peters, 1992), market orientation (Narver & Slater, 1990, Slater &
Narver, 2000), network orientation (Evanschitzky, 2003) or
entrepreneurial orientation in the sense of EO or Entrepreneurial
Management (for a further discussion see section 2.2.).
With regards to marketing, the American Marketing Association
(AMA) recently defined marketing as an “organizational function and a set
of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to
customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit
the organization and its stakeholders” (Keefe, 2004, p. 17, emphasis by the
authors). However, there might be other interpretations of marketing such
as marketing activities of individuals, or pertaining to marketing not so
much as an organizational function but rather as a cultural orientation
(Zinkhan & Willams, 2007).
Since there might be many different conceptualizations for each
entrepreneurship and marketing, it is no wonder that a multitude of
definitions exist for entrepreneurial marketing. On the one hand, Morris et
 Entrepreneurial Marketing: Moving beyond Marketing in New Ventures

al. (2002) identify a stream of usage in which the term refers to marketing
activities in firms that are resource-constrained and hence apply marketing
in an unsophisticated and personal way. On the other hand, Morris et al.
also find a stream of research that describes “unplanned, non-linear,
visionary marketing actions of the entrepreneur” (Morris et al., 2002, p.
4). The following table (see Table 1) lists some of the definitions of EM
which could be identified in the literature. As a starting point to this list,
we investigated articles in the leading entrepreneurship journals (Journal
of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice, Small
Business Economics, Journal of Small Business Management,
Entrepreneurship and Regional Development) from 2002-2005 and
included articles that were known to the authors from other sources. This
list only covers articles in which an explicit attempt is made to define
“Entrepreneurial Marketing” and excludes those which define the concept
“somewhat loosely” (Morris et al., 2002, p. 4).
Indeed, some definitions refer explicitly to marketing in small ventures
(Hill and Wright, 2000; less explicitly Stokes, 2002a). Some make no
explicit reference to the firm size or age (Morris et al., 2000; Bäckbrö and
Nyström, 2006), and others focus on qualitative aspects of EM such as
innovativeness (Bäckbrö and Nyström, 2006; Stokes, 2002a) or value
creation (Morris et al., 2000; Bäckbrö and Nyström, 2006; less explicitly
Stokes, 2002a).
Thus, from the discussion in literature two perspectives can be
identified: The first one defines EM with an emphasis on the quantitative
aspect of the company as marketing for small or new ventures. The second
one highlights the qualitative aspect of EM by defining it as marketing
with an entrepreneurial spirit (marketing by entrepreneurs). We argue that
both attempts of defining EM might be two sides of the same coin, as the
qualitative characteristics (smallness and newness) seems to be a context
which favours marketing activities which are driven by an entrepreneurial,
i.e. innovative, risk-oriented and proactive spirit.

Table 1 Definitions of Entrepreneurial Marketing

Authors Entrepreneurial Marketing

Bäckbrö and “Entrepreneurial marketing is the overlapping aspects between
Nyström entrepreneurship and marketing; therefore it is the behavior shown by
(2006), p. 13 any individual and/or organization that attempts to establish and
promote market ideas, while developing new ones in order to create
value.”
Bjerke and “EM is the “marketing of small firms growing through
Hultman entrepreneurship.””
(2002), p. 15
Duus (1997), “The distinguishing feature of this new interpretation, which is
 S. Kraus, R. Harms and M. Fink

p. 297 essentially a market-oriented inside-out perspective, could be the

development of the specific competencies of the firm by
entrepreneurial action with a view to serving future customers' latent
demand for products that do not yet exist. […] this can be called "the
entrepreneurial marketing concept.””
Hill and Wright “A new stream of research describes the marketing orientation of
(2000), p. 25 small firms as ‘entrepreneurial marketing’. This means a style of
marketing behavior that is driven and shaped by the owner manager’s
personality.”
Miles and “[…] firms adopting EMPs [entrepreneurial marketing processes, the
Darroch (2006), authors] will engage in marketing processes emphasizing opportunity
p. 488 creation and/or discovery, evaluation and exploitation.”
Morris et al. “the proactive identification and exploitation of opportunities for
(2000) acquiring and retaining profitable customers through innovative
approaches to risk management, resource leveraging and value
creation.” (p. 5)

“EM synthesizes critical aspects of marketing and entrepreneurship

into a comprehensive conceptualization where marketing becomes a
process that firms use to act entrepreneurially.” (p. 2)

“the unplanned, non-linear, visionary marketing actions of the

entrepreneur.” (p. 4)
Shaw (2004), “[…] four themes relevant to understanding entrepreneurial
p. 197 marketing within a social enterprise context emerged: opportunity
recognition (OR); entrepreneurial effort (EE); an entrepreneurial
organizational culture (EOC); and networks and networking (N&N).”
Stokes (2000a), “marketing carried out by entrepreneurs or owner-managers of
p. 2 entrepreneurial ventures”
Stokes (2000a), “The entrepreneurial marketing concept is focused on innovations
p. 13 and the development of ideas in line with an intuitive understanding
of market needs; […].”

2.1.1 Entrepreneurial Marketing as Small or New Venture Marketing

(Quantitative Aspect)

Marketing is widely considered as the key to survival, development and

success of small or new ventures (Bjerke & Hultman, 2002: Carson et al.,
1995; Gumpert, 1997; Teach & Tarpley, 1987). Although marketing is
tremendously important for these enterprises (McGrath et al., 1996) –
venture capitalists even rate its overall importance for the success of new
ventures at 6.7 on a scale of 7, above all other functional areas (Hills &
LaForge, 1992) – it is practiced in a way different from textbook
guidelines. Until the 1990s, it was widely assumed that small or new
ventures required a simplified version of the more ‘sophisticated’
marketing practices that were developed for larger companies. However,
there might be a gap between standard textbook approaches and actual
 Entrepreneurial Marketing: Moving beyond Marketing in New Ventures

marketing practice in smaller enterprises (Hills, 1995), and a specific

approach to marketing is called for that takes into account the specific
challenges that most small or new ventures face.
First, the liability of smallness (Aldrich & Auster, 1986) refers to
limited financial and human resources, limited market power and a small
customer base (Carson, 1985). In small ventures (which new ventures
typically are), the owner-manager is the focal person for all decisions
(Stokes, 2002) and shapes all its activities (Hill & Wright, 2000). As a
consequence for marketing, this implies that marketing may be performed
in a relatively unsophisticated way, is strongly tied to the person of the
owner/manager and might have to be executed with limited resources.
Second, the liability of newness describes a lack of established
relationships with market partners and a lack of routines in the firm
(Aldrich & Auster, 1986). As a consequence for marketing, new ventures
are faced with a lack of trust in their products due to a missing track
record or an unknown company or brand name and a lack of expertise and
experience in marketing (Gruber, 2004).

2.1.1.1 Consequences of the Liability of Smallness I: Low Formalization

Formal marketing plans are regarded as beneficial in that they help to

identify competitive advantages and secure resources, gain commitment
through communication with participants, and set objectives and
strategies. This claim is supported by empirical evidence that suggests that
there is a relationship between formal strategic planning and small and
new enterprise survival and success (Kraus et al., 2008).
However, small and new ventures seem to perform marketing planning
in a rather informal way (Dess & Robinson, 1984). The marketing style of
small enterprises is said to be more simplistic and ad hoc, based on
intuition, with little or no formal structures (Hill & Wright, 2000). Formal
marketing planning may be rejected due to a number of reasons.
First, these ventures tend to focus on short-term survival rather than on
long-term growth (Barrett & Sexton, 2006). It is likely that these top-level
corporate goals (survival vs. growth) might impact the organizational
function of marketing. This argument is supported by the fact that if small
and new ventures plan, they tend to focus on financial planning rather than
marketing planning, as liquidity constraints might put a firm out of
business. For example, Lancaster and Waddelow (1998) found that in a
sample of 20 British SMEs (small and medium enterprises), all of them
had a formal financial plan, but only three of them had a formal marketing
plan. In the same vein, Kraus et al. (2008) discovered that less than one
third of all Austrian start-ups performed formal marketing planning.
 S. Kraus, R. Harms and M. Fink

Second, criteria for marketing planning such as customer loyalty or

return per customer are difficult to measure and need experienced
marketers to perform planning. Due to the liability of smallness, this kind
of expertise may not be available.

2.1.1.2 Consequences of the Liability of Smallness II: Strong Impact of

the Entrepreneur

Against the background of the entrepreneurs’ dominant role in SMEs, his

management orientation and especially his attitude towards marketing are
critical. However, entrepreneurs may tend to underestimate the importance
of marketing. For example, in an investigation of 68 small Irish firms,
none of the interviewed entrepreneurs classified themselves as
sophisticated marketers, whereas 60 percent even regarded themselves as
non-marketers, and the remaining 40 percent only as “implicit marketers”
(Carson & Cromie, 1990).
The strong reliance on a single entrepreneur may have negative
consequences. A study on 100 VC-backed startups from Germany shows
that marketing planning that is carried out in a team is significantly more
successful (Gruber, 2005).
According to Hills and Wright (2000), the term “marketing” is
understood by SME owner-managers mostly in terms of “sales”. This
may, particularly in the case of younger small ventures, be the result of the
general corporate goal of survival, as initial sales are needed to keep the
company afloat.

2.1.1.3 Consequences of the Liability of Newness

According to Gruber (2004), key challenges for marketing in new ventures

result from the fact that these ventures and their products are unknown to
their customers, which results in a lack of trust for these parties. A primary
task for new ventures will be to build up trust and to win their first
customers.
Pertaining to the necessity to build up trust, a study by Witt & Rode
(2005) on 311 new ventures from Germany shows the importance of a
timely corporate brand-building process that includes the corporate
culture, behaviour, design and communication, and is addressed not only
to external, but also to internal stakeholders. With regard to the acquisition
of customers, personal networks play an important role for the acquisition
of first customers (Carson, 1985, Tyebjee et al., 1983). The use of
personal networks may be both an effective and cost-efficient way to
address customers.
 Entrepreneurial Marketing: Moving beyond Marketing in New Ventures

In the context of new ventures, a number of articles discuss that these

firms tend to begin with informal marketing efforts, only gradually
professionalizing and formalizing them as the venture grows and an
official marketing department becomes a necessity (Carson, 1985, Tyebjee
et al., 1983). According to Carson and Gilmore (2001), SMEs develop in a
stage model when it comes to marketing behaviour: in the start-up stage,
business activity will focus mostly on the product and its customer
acceptance. Marketing is thus likely to be dominated by reactions to
customer demands and market changes. Marketing in SMEs seems to be
more ad hoc like in the initial phases of enterprise existence. As the
business develops, more experimenting will take place. Over the years, the
enterprise will develop its own marketing style and practice. These steps
imply a development from uncontrollable to relatively controllable
marketing circumstances when growing within the organizational life
cycle.

2.1.2 Entrepreneurship as a Qualitative Aspect of Marketing

We argue that the organizational function marketing may be influenced by

the degree of entrepreneurship of the firm. For conceptualizing
entrepreneurship, we base our arguments on EO and Entrepreneurial
Management. According to Miller (1983), an entrepreneurial firm is “one
that engages in product-market innovation, undertakes somewhat risky
ventures, and is first to come up with proactive innovations …” (p. 771).
By enhancing the focus from product-market innovations to the execution
of (other) organizational functions, a conceptualization of EM emerges.
Entrepreneurial Management describes “the process by which individuals
– either on their own or inside organizations – pursue opportunities
without regard to the resources they currently control” (Stevenson &
Jarillo, 1990, p. 23). This conceptualization adds the elements of the
pursuit of opportunities and the disregard for currently controlled
resources to our conceptualization of entrepreneurship.
Combining the AMA definition of marketing and the definitions of
entrepreneurship, we propose a new definition of entrepreneurial
marketing:

“Entrepreneurial marketing is an organizational function and a

set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value
to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways
that benefit the organization and its stakeholders, and that is
characterized by innovativeness, risk-taking, proactiveness, and
may be performed without resources currently controlled.”
 S. Kraus, R. Harms and M. Fink

Our definition is closely related to the conceptualization of

entrepreneurial marketing processes (EMP) by Miles and Darroch (2006).
EMP are marketing processes that emphasize “opportunity creation and/or
discovery, evaluation and exploitation” (Miles & Darroch, 2006, p. 488).
This definition also has a process orientation, but is restricted to the aspect
of opportunity recognition, while innovativeness, risk taking and
proactiveness are not included. Hence, we believe that this definition may
be somewhat narrow. However, the elaborations of Miles and Darroch
(2006) on the nature of marketing processes that are related to the
creation/identification, the assessment and the exploitation of
opportunities are very insightful for these particular aspects of EM.
Our definition is very close to the one proposed by Morris et al. (2000,
p. 5). The difference between the definitions is not so much the order in
which the concepts are introduced, but that we refer to “processes to
create, communicate and deliver value” rather than to the “identification
and exploitation of opportunities”. This is a crucial distinction since the
concept of “opportunity” has so far not been clarified in entrepreneurship
research (Chiasson & Saunders, 2007; McMullen et al., 2007), which
might render our definition as more precise.
Taking the example of promotion, a “conservative” approach to
marketing might be to use classical communication channels (print, TV)
with commonplace text and images in reaction to a competitor’s
campaign, with the own campaign being paid fully by the firm. An
entrepreneurial approach to marketing would use innovative
communication channels (e.g. Internet, mobile marketing) or use classical
channels in an innovative way (see the examples in section 2.4) with new
content, and would be ahead of the competition in doing this. In addition,
the communication strategy makes use of resources that are external to the
firm, such as word-of-mouth from customers. In the same vein, other
marketing functions used to create and deliver value to customers and to
manage customer relationships (Ahuja et al., 2007, Keefe, 2004) might be
either conservative or entrepreneurial.
This example shows that conservative and/or entrepreneurial
marketing is possible for both small and large firms. Small firms with a
conservative approach to marketing might advertise in a local newspaper
with commonplace advertising, while a large firm that uses entrepreneurial
marketing might launch a sophisticated viral advertising campaign. To
underpin this view on EM, in the next section we will discuss various
examples of an entrepreneurial approach to promotion.

Entrepreneurial Marketing: Entrepreneurial Approaches to the

Marketing Functions
 Entrepreneurial Marketing: Moving beyond Marketing in New Ventures

2.2.1 Entrepreneurial Marketing: Entrepreneurial Approaches to

Promotion

EM pertaining to promotion is based on word-of-mouth communication

and recommendation to develop a customer base (Stokes, 2000b). This
approach may be more cost-efficient than classical advertising. In
addition, EM aims at target groups that are often not accessible via TV or
print. It is grounded on the exponential diffusion of communication
contents. Because the communication is distributed not by the company,
but by the customers themselves, using their private or professional
networks, the customers need to have a high involvement in the product in
order to spread the message (Ahuja et al., 2007).
The following sub-sections deal with the three best-known and
momentarily most successful forms of EM in terms of an entrepreneurial
approach to promotion: guerrilla marketing, buzz marketing, and viral
marketing (see Table 2). These three forms are partially overlapping, since
they are all based on the concept of word-of-mouth marketing (Ahuja et
al., 2007; Creelman, 1992).
Table 2 Forms of Entrepreneurial Marketing in the Domain of Promotion

Form Main characteristics Source

Guerrilla Marketing Bootstrapping, creative/leveraging use of Levinson (1984)
available resources and a highly targeted mix
of innovative and effective communication
techniques, networking, using energy and
imagination; low cost.
Buzz Marketing Customer-generated information distribution Rosenbloom
by verbal means, especially recommendations, (2000)
through personal networks by creating
excitement, infatuation and enthusiasm, often
connected to events.
Viral Marketing Self-replicating promotion spreading and Jurvetson &
multiplying like a virus over community webs. Draper (1998);
Similar to buzz marketing, but more Internet- Godin &
oriented. Gladwell (2001)
Source: Morris et al. (2002), p. 3, adapted.

2.2.1.1 Guerrilla Marketing

The term guerrilla marketing was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in 1984
(Levinson, 1984). It stands for a variety of low-cost, high-impact
marketing techniques that allow small companies and/or individuals to act
like big companies. Guerrilla marketing can be regarded as the ancestor of
 S. Kraus, R. Harms and M. Fink

the other EM concepts. It is about the attempt to achieve wide-ranging

results with an untypically low utilization of resources by acting like a
guerrilla. Guerrilla marketing is meant to be surprising, efficient,
rebellious, infectious, and in the best case even spectacular, thereby
bursting through conventional perceptions and leading to a “wow factor”.
It focuses on simplicity, and aims for the recipient to be riveted to the
message, which stimulates a willingness to distribute it further (Ahuja et
al., 2007). Guerrilla marketing actions are often only one-time, limited in
scope, and seldom repeatable.
A successful example of guerrilla marketing is a Vodafone emblem on
a streaker’s naked body at an Australian football match, where the streaker
was finally arrested amidst both public and media attention. Another
example was the henna tattoo of the German condom producer
CONDOMI! on the back of the head of a boxer in a world championship
fight, cunningly bypassing the broadcasting TV stations’ advertising
contracts. A third example from sports is the “Go Heinrich Go!” campaign
in Germany that was initiated by the sporting goods producer Nike. The
campaign sponsored the participation of the 80-year-old runner Heinrich
at the famous Berlin marathon. The aged runner completed the 42 km run,
which resulted in an enormous media echo for Heinrich and for Nike, and
in a serious defeat of the Berlin marathon’s official main sponsor,
ADIDAS. This campaign ultimately called traditional sports sponsoring
and the modern image of the sports brand ADIDAS into question (Kraus
et al., 2008).

2.2.1.2 Buzz Marketing

Buzz marketing is a new form of word-of-mouth communication which

emerged as a reaction to the fact that more and more consumers are
critical towards classical advertising. It is the attempt to stimulate the
recipients through the use of spectacular actions so much that the product
becomes the subject of discussions or gossip (Rosenbloom, 2000). Buzz
marketing uses the recipient’s Internet, e-mail or cell phone networks to
generate a buzz around a product or a brand, thereby leaving the actual
advertising to the customers. These actions can e.g. be an event or an
activity which causes a ruckus and thereby builds publicity, enthusiasm
and information for the customers and leads to brand-building (Ahuja et
al., 2007). The consultancy McKinsey estimates that the sales volume of
up to 67 percent of all products and services in the US is influenced by
buzz (Dye, 2000). Buzz is not only initiated by media campaigns; media
coverage itself is a part of buzz. In the ideal case, a cleverly designed buzz
marketing action is covered by the media and further distributed at no
costs for the marketer.
 Entrepreneurial Marketing: Moving beyond Marketing in New Ventures

Buzz marketing’s target persons are often opinion leaders with central
hub positions in their social networks. Therefore, they can disseminate the
message in an exponential way. The major strength of buzz marketing is
its credibility, since people never trust advertising as much as the
statements of other persons which they know. The biggest weakness of
buzz marketing is that it can be counterproductive when the product itself
does not ultimately convince the customer. In addition, buzz marketing is
suited only for new products or services since it addresses the appeal of
novelty the product has for the customer. Therefore, buzz marketing
functions best with products that are perceived as exciting and innovative.
Only few companies successfully manage to constantly create new
rumours and buzz around their products (Kraus et al., 2008).
A successful example of buzz marketing is the low budget movie The
Blair Witch Project, which was filmed in 1999 in the style of an amateur
video. The producers used the new medium of the Internet to create word-
of-mouth communication for the movie. They initiated the rumour that the
original film-makers, three college film students, disappeared during their
inquiries in the Maryland woods, and that the movie contains the last shots
the three had made with their camera. Half of the world asked themselves,
accompanied by a background documentary on the American SciFi
Channel, what might have happened to the three students. The film
industry web site IMDB.com even proclaimed the students “missing,
probably dead” over the course of many weeks. The movie, which was
financed with a mere 35,000 USD by the two young producers, finally
became a world-wide success with box office takings of more than 250
million USD. An ensuing Hollywood sequel cost about 15 million USD,
but only earned 26 million USD in the US (Kraus et al., 2008).
However, buzz marketing is not restricted to small or new firms. For
example, the multinational consumer goods company Procter & Gamble
founded a spin-off called Tremor Inc. which specialized on the stimulation
of word-of-mouth. Tremor built up a panel of more than 250,000
teenagers who exclusively receive information about the newest movies,
music and products, and forward these messengers to their friends. In the
meantime, “Buzz Agencies”, i.e. marketing or advertising agencies that
specialize in the creation of buzz for their clients have been founded
(Ahuja et al., 2007).

2.2.1.3 Viral Marketing

The term viral marketing was used for the first time in 1997. It describes a
form of marketing that uses social networks (family, friends, neighbours,
colleagues) to draw attention towards brands, products or campaigns by
 S. Kraus, R. Harms and M. Fink

spreading messages – mostly through word-of-mouth marketing – like a

virus (Phelps et al., 2004). Viral marketing is about spreading messages
and rumours about the product through voluntary and honest
communication by the customer himself with the aim of acquiring new
customers (Rosenbloom, 2000). Viral marketers spread their campaign
like a virus, seemingly uncontrolled, mostly over the Internet. The success
of viral marketing depends on whether the client has a personal benefit to
forward the marketing message (Dobele et al., 2005). If successful, the
message can be distributed with low costs by the marketer to a large
number of recipients (Mohr & Spekman, 1994). Its main advantages are
extraordinarily low costs, resulting from the use of new communication
channels, particularly Internet and email (Dobele et al., 2005). Viral
marketing can accordingly be understood as the impersonal (lacking face-
to-face communication) and technology-backed version of buzz marketing
(Mohr & Spekman, 1994).
A successful example for viral marketing is the free Internet shooter
Mohrhuhnjagd (English: “Grouse Hunt”), which was used by the Johnnie
Walker liquor company as a marketing instrument. The game was
advertised only by word-of-mouth through the Internet and newspaper and
TV coverage. The game became so popular that the media reported
productivity losses of several million euros in Germany alone, as the game
was played mostly during official working hours.
Other prominent examples are Internet services such as the first file
sharing network Napster, YouTube.com (a video hosting service), Skype
(a communications facilitator), messages in chat rooms which are bundled
with advertising contents, or – in the non-digital world – free postcards in
bars. The rock band Nine Inch Nails used viral marketing to promote its
2006 album. For this campaign, “secret” messages were printed on T-
shirts, USB sticks with songs were hidden in club toilets, and several
anonymous websites were launched. In addition to that, the band used
answering machine messages that could be listened to over telephone
numbers which could be found on the Internet, flyers, and “illegally”
published Internet tracks of the new album.
A recent example of viral marketing is the communication strategy for
the 2008 catastrophe movie Cloverfield that earned an open day box office
taking of 17 mn USD. The viral marketing campaign was based on
secrecy coupled with the publication of little snippets such as fake news
broadcasts in several languages, which were spread over YouTube and
other Internet channels. The campaign began with a teaser trailer
published long before the movie. After the teaser, cryptic messages sent
moviegoers on a scavenger hunt to decode clues about the movie. As the
movie’s release date got closer, viral websites (such as 1-18-08.com, the
movie opening date), trailers, and more clues popped up, such as slusho.jp,
 Entrepreneurial Marketing: Moving beyond Marketing in New Ventures

a fake drink company which appeared in the movie and had its own
website. At the same time, a weblog of the proclaimed antagonists of the
chief character appeared in Nepalese. In addition to that, MySpace profiles
for the movie characters were set up, and an interactive comic story was
developed in cooperation with fans. As a result, buzz developed, and
people wanted to know more about the movie.

2.2.2 Entrepreneurial Marketing: Entrepreneurial Approaches to Product,

Place and Price

The examples from the previous section illustrate EM as applied to the

field of promotion. However, an entrepreneurial approach to marketing
can also cover the elements of product, place, and price.
An impressive example of EM focused on product development was a
young entrepreneur from New Zealand named Jeremy Moon who created
a company called Icebreaker. He realized that wool underwear had a
negative image (itchy, bad smell, outdated designs). So he decided to draw
up a global product line of underwear made of merino wool. He was sure
that the long, fine wool which already was used for high-end suits and ties
would be a best seller. Moon spent half of his seed financing on creating a
concept of what his global brand would look like in a few years time.
Starting from this vision, he developed the product in a retrograde manner
and started to build a global brand (Birchfield, 2000).
Another example of EM which focuses on the element of place is the
fund raising program of the non-profit organization Two Wheel View.
Based on the insight that young adults distrust the media and traditional
advertising, the organization developed a concept that directly reaches the
target group by taking them on adventure trips to countries such as
Argentina. The participants return with a deep understanding of the
problems and are devoted to the aims of the organization. By bringing the
target group to the “product”, a very strong commitment to the aims of the
organization is established (Edwards, 2007).
An interesting case of entrepreneurial marketing that used mainly the
price as point of leverage was the online-distribution of the latest
Radiohead album In Rainbows. The customers could download the album
and decide how much to pay for it. Some fans paid up to 1,000 USD. The
band successfully communicated its new distribution policy as a struggle
for freedom of idealistic artists against the corrupt music industry (Peitz &
Waelbroeck, 2005).
 S. Kraus, R. Harms and M. Fink

3 Discussion and Conclusion

In contrast to defining EM as the marketing of small and new ventures, we
conceptualize EM as a particular type of marketing that is innovative,
risky, proactive, focuses on opportunities and can be performed without
resources currently controlled. In particular, the latter aspect of the
resources might make EM especially attractive to small and new ventures
that face the liabilities of newness and smallness. However, we believe
that EM can be implemented irrespective of firm size.
The benefit of our conceptualization is that it disentangles EM from
new venture marketing and innovation marketing (i.e. the marketing of
innovations, not an innovative approach to marketing). This might add
clarity to the understanding of EM in the current literature. Moreover, it
stresses the fact that entrepreneurial aspects of marketing in large
enterprises might also be subject to research.
A potential drawback of our conceptualization may be that it adds yet
another approach to the many definitions of this concept. However, as we
draw on established concepts for both marketing and entrepreneurship, we
hope to find some support for our proposition.
To tap the full potential of EM, it is necessary to customize these
alternative approaches to marketing for less sophisticated marketers as
well. For this, a standard set of EM measures could be defined. Such an
EM toolkit might serve as a first orientation and as a starting point for the
conceptualization of EM activities. So far, the marketers can only refer to
more or less elaborate compilations of best-practice cases. To provide a set
of norm strategies for different applications and contexts, we need to
understand the mechanisms behind EM activities in greater depth. This
implies two tasks for future research in this field: First, we have to
interlink our research activities and current results with those of
neighbouring disciplines such as sociology and psychology to get a more
holistic picture and a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms
and their interdependencies. Second, we need to pursue empirical research
in EM to build up a basis for the evaluation of the theses formulated in
current literature. Against the backdrop of the research object’s
characteristics, field experiments seem to be an attractive option. Other
methods of empirical social science such as participative observational
research or narrative interviews also appear promising.
A prerequisite for concerted efforts in empirical research on EM is to
reach a basis consensus on what we mean when we talk about EM. In this
article, we challenged the misperception that EM might only be regarded
as marketing for new ventures. Rather, it goes beyond this: marketing with
an entrepreneurial spirit is well-suited to address the liabilities of newness
 Entrepreneurial Marketing: Moving beyond Marketing in New Ventures

and smallness, although most small/new ventures might not perform

entrepreneurial marketing. On the other hand, entrepreneurial marketing
can also be found in larger firms. In addition to our conceptual arguments,
we provided a variety of examples that support our ideas. We hope that the
arguments presented in this text contribute to an integrative understanding
of EM, and lead to vital academic discussions.

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