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Exploring entrepreneurial marketing

a b c a
Morgan Miles , Audrey Gilmore , Paul Harrigan , Gemma Lewis &
d
Zubin Sethna
a
Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, University of
Tasmania, Launceston, UK
b
Ulster Business School, University of Ulster, Coleraine, UK
c
UWA Business School, The University of Western Australia,
Crawley, Australia
d
Baresman Consulting, London, UK
Published online: 06 May 2014.

To cite this article: Morgan Miles, Audrey Gilmore, Paul Harrigan, Gemma Lewis & Zubin
Sethna (2014): Exploring entrepreneurial marketing, Journal of Strategic Marketing, DOI:
10.1080/0965254X.2014.914069

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 Journal of Strategic Marketing, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2014.914069

Exploring entrepreneurial marketing

Morgan Miles , Audrey Gilmoreb, Paul Harriganc*, Gemma Lewisa and Zubin Sethnad
a

a
Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, University of Tasmania, Launceston, UK; bUlster
Business School, University of Ulster, Coleraine, UK; cUWA Business School, The University of
Western Australia, Crawley, Australia; dBaresman Consulting, London, UK
(Received 18 February 2014; accepted 25 March 2014)

This paper furthers the conceptual development of entrepreneurial marketing (EM) as

theory. EM draws on the work of both marketing and entrepreneurship scholars and has
evolved primarily from the marketing management and entrepreneurship literatures.
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Beginning with an overview of the different schools of thought from which the concept
of EM has evolved, this paper attempts to outline and review the issues of EM that
delineate it as a distinct area within the discipline of marketing. The discussion presents
three potential locus of EM thought within the firm: vertical EM, horizontal EM, and
EM as a temporal phenomenon. Finally, in adopting Hunt’s (2010) benchmarks that
seek to verify the existence of a distinct body of theory, the paper concludes that EM is
advancing towards theory construction.
Keywords: entrepreneurial; marketing; entrepreneurship

Introduction
This paper charts and furthers the development of entrepreneurial marketing (EM) as
theory. EM draws on the work of both marketing and entrepreneurship scholars by
focusing on how individuals and management teams accept risk to innovatively and
proactively leverage resources to create value in the marketplace. There is increasing
empirical support that both marketing and entrepreneurial competence are important for
firm performance (Atuahene-Gima, 1996, 2005; O’Dwyer, Gilmore, & Carson, 2009;
Slotegraaf, Moorman, & Inman, 2003). This paper attempts to define and review the issues
of EM that delineate it as a distinct area within the discipline of marketing by extending
the work of Hills and LaForge (1992), Hills, Hultman, and Miles (2008), and others on the
evolution and development of EM theory.

Background
Entrepreneurship and marketing have been viewed as fundamental strategic orientations
or business philosophies by which an organization senses and responds to internal and
external stimulus and opportunities (Day, 1994; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). Hills and
LaForge (1992, p. 33) argue that ‘the underlying philosophy and orientation of the
[marketing] discipline are attuned to market and customer needs, which have direct
applicability to entrepreneurship’. They identified that marketing and entrepreneurship
were similar in multiple ways, including a focus on the boundary spanning nature of their
activities, extensive interplay with the environment, and their capacity to absorb risk and
uncertainty. These orientations as expressed in practice are sometimes consistent with

*Corresponding author. Email: paul.harrigan@uwa.edu.au

q 2014 Taylor & Francis

 2 M. Miles et al.

each other and often highly interrelated (Becherer & Maurer, 1997; Kwak, Jaju, Puzakova,
& Rocereto, 2013; Miles & Arnold, 1991; Morris & Paul, 1987). Although they share
much in common, entrepreneurship and marketing have largely developed as distinct
disciplines (Webb, Ireland, Hitt, Kistruck, & Tihanyi, 2011). However, both incorporate
themes such as innovation and creativity, the importance of being opportunistic, flexible,
and proactive, and they are essentially process based and market driven (Carson, 2010;
Gilmore, McAuley, Gallagher, & Carson, 2013).
Not only are entrepreneurship and innovation relevant as complementary capabilities
for success within the marketplace, but also marketing is essential to the creation,
development, and sustainability of new ventures (Collinson & Shaw, 2001; Davis, Hills, &
LaForge, 1985; Hills, 1981; Stokes, 2000). The notion of market creation is at the core of
entrepreneurship – ‘a discipline concerned with how, in the absence of current markets for
future goods and services, goods and services manage to come into existence’
(Venkataraman, 1997, p. 120). Darroch and Miles (2011) argue that both marketing and
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entrepreneurship are elements required for success in market creation initiatives.

Contemporary discussions within the marketing literature suggest that the purpose of
marketing is to create valuable mutually beneficial exchange relationships (Keefe, 2004).
Acknowledging this, Miles and Darroch (2006) argue that exploiting attractive marketing
opportunities by leveraging innovation to create goods and services that generate superior
value is EM. Common to both entrepreneurship and marketing is a focus on identifying
and exploiting opportunities. While the entrepreneurship literature places greater
emphasis on the needs of the entrepreneur, the firm, and its stockholders, marketing
focuses on creating value for customers and other stakeholders.
The importance of opportunity recognition is acknowledged in both the marketing and
entrepreneurship literatures. Much of the research into opportunity recognition has been
published in the field of entrepreneurship and has either taken the behavioural or the
process approach (see for example Gaglio & Katz, 2001; Kirzner, 1979; Kuratko &
Hodgetts, 2004; Sarason, Dean, & Dillard, 2006; Stevenson & Jarillo, 1990;
Venkataraman, 1997). Opportunity recognition from a behavioural perspective considers
factors such as the individual entrepreneur’s knowledge, alertness, intuition, and
creativity, and recognizes that situation and market context play a part in entrepreneurial
opportunity search. A process perspective of opportunity recognition focuses on the
activities that the entrepreneur carries out at the various stages in the development of an
opportunity.
From a marketing perspective, opportunity recognition is facilitated through a focus on
markets and customers and involves recognizing the importance of creativity (Kaish &
Gilad, 1991; Morris & Paul, 1987) and innovation within the market place. Market
opportunities are often identified in a serendipitous manner. A number of important factors
that contribute to opportunity recognition are market knowledge, analytical approaches to
opportunity recognition, and alertness to opportunity (Hills, Lumpkin, & Singh, 1997;
Hulbert, Gilmore, & Carson, 2012).
The work of Matsuno, Mentzer, and Özsomer (2002) has contributed to the
entrepreneurship/marketing interface by attempting to bridge the gap between
entrepreneurial proclivity and market orientation. They argue that being too preoccupied
on understanding and serving a known market, managers may resist being innovative,
proactive, and risk-taking (Matsuno et al., 2002). Similarly, entrepreneurial proclivity on
its own is not sufficient to achieve positive performance (Matsuno et al., 2002). Instead the
ideal path is one that starts with being entrepreneurial, as this promotes lower levels of
departmentalization. In turn a market orientation is encouraged, which results in a positive
 Journal of Strategic Marketing 3

influence on performance (Matsuno et al., 2002). Thus, entrepreneurial proclivity has a

positive impact on performance when the relationship is mediated by market orientation.
Innovation also has a central role in business creation and is a core component of
entrepreneurial activity. Innovation as a creative, proactive, risk-accepting mechanism to
solve customer problems is well recognized to be important for business in practice and
has been debated in both the entrepreneurship and marketing literatures (O’Dwyer et al.,
2009). In the entrepreneurship literature, innovation has been described as being central to
entrepreneurship as the means by which entrepreneurs can exploit change and provide an
opportunity to create different businesses. In the marketing literature, innovation has been
described as a marketing-oriented construct that creates an outward looking focus for all
that the company does (Buckler, 1997). Thus, innovation can be a critical component of
competitive advantage in contemporary marketplaces (Covin & Miles, 1999). In fact,
innovation, opportunity recognition in current and future markets, and accepting the risks
of engaging in proactive initiatives are fundamental to organizations creating competitive
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advantage using EM.

Schools of thought
One contribution of this paper is to provide a conceptualization and overview of the major
theories and themes from business disciplines and traditions that have contributed to the
concept of EM. These ‘schools of thought’ have provided the theoretical heritage of the
conceptual framework for understanding the complexity of EM, which differentiate it
from its ‘parent’ disciplines of management, marketing, and entrepreneurship. While the
term EM has been used in various ways (Morris, Schindehutte, & LaForge, 2002; Stokes,
2000), it has been most frequently associated with the marketing activities of firms which
are small and resource constrained, and thus need to be creative and innovative to survive
in a competitive market place. Early work in the field conceptualized EM as a less
sophisticated and informal approach to marketing, due to its relevance to small and
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and emerging firms (Sullivan-Mort, Weerawardena, &
Liesch, 2012). In addition, the term has been used to describe organizations of all sizes that
proactively leverage risk-taking innovations to gain competitive advantage (Miles &
Darroch, 2006). EM is linked to the activities that occur in the creation of new markets by
high growth or born global firms, such as those in the information technology sector (see
for example Coviello & Munro, 1995; Sullivan-Mort et al., 2012). The development and
wide use of the term EM has led to some confusion regarding what it actually is and how it
is different from traditional marketing theory and practice.
This paper extends and updates work by Hills and LaForge (1992) on EM who adapted
Sheth, Gardner, and Garrett’s (1988) typology of the 12 schools of marketing thought to
reflect the emergence of different perspectives of EM. Here, we argue that EM scholarship
can be loosely categorized into three major schools of thought defined in relation to where
theory was originally derived, and include: (1) EM as entrepreneurship in marketing, (2)
EM as networks and relationships in the context of SME marketing, and (3) EM as
marketing in entrepreneurship. Table 1 provides a summary of these major schools of EM
thought.

EM as entrepreneurship in marketing
EM in the context of marketing management was championed by Hills’ (1987) work on
the entrepreneurship and marketing interface. Researchers at this time (late 1980s, early
 Downloaded by [University of Tasmania] at 15:22 08 May 2014
Table 1. Major schools of EM thought.
School of thought EM as entrepreneurship in marketing
Origin of theory Derived deductively from the marketing
management literature
Selected works Hills (1981); Dickson and Giglierano
(1986); Miles and Arnold (1991); Hills
and LaForge (1992); Becherer and
Maurer (1997); Morris et al. (2002)
Core concepts Marketing creates value by satisfying
needs (both explicit and implicit).
Entrepreneurship enables a firm to
create radical innovations through
opportunity discovery, assessment, and
exploitation
Utility to practice A perspective of marketing that
advocates more innovation
Utility to theory Mostly contributes by taking marketing
concepts and applying them in EM
Utility to policy Macro-marketing provides a policy
perspective
EM as relationship and network
marketing in SMEs
Derived inductively from the study of
how SMEs do business (from start-up to
harvest) and deductively from the study
of how firms leverage relationships in
marketing (IMP school)
Birley (1982); Carson (1985, 1993);
Carson and Cromie (1989); Carson and
Gilmore (2000); Gilmore and Carson
(1996, 1999); Coviello, Brodie, and
Munro (1997); Coviello and Brodie
(1998); Hultman (1999); Hultman and
Shaw (2003); Read et al. (2009);
O’Dwyer et al. (2009); Harrigan,
Ramsey, and Ibbotson (2008, 2011,
2012)
SMEs conduct business and marketing
in a fundamentally different way than
large corporations. CRM theory is
relevant but adapted
Very useful exploration of how SMEs
leverage limited marketing resources
Has integrated networks and relation-
ships into SME marketing
Macro-marketing provides a policy
perspective
EM as marketing in entrepreneurship
Derived deductively from the strategic
management literature
Murray (1981); Morris and Paul (1987);
Covin and Covin (1990); Covin, Slevin,
and Schultz (1994); McDougall, Covin,
Robinson, and Herron (1994); Schin-
dehutte, Morris and Kocak (2008);
Webb et al. (2011)
Marketing tactics as a function of
M. Miles et al.
strategic management
Very much practice focused on how to
create rent and competitive advantage
Area of great interest for strategic
management scholars currently
Firm-level work that suggests policy to
support these initiatives
 Journal of Strategic Marketing 5

1990s) considered the similarities that were evident in the marketing and entrepreneurship
literatures and developed the debate on EM by integrating concepts and theories primarily
from marketing, including marketing strategy, market analysis, and marketing manage-
ment. This school of thought was further developed under the direction of Hills and
LaForge (1992) and colleagues through the establishment of the marketing and
entrepreneurship research conference in 1982, the American Marketing Association’s
(AMA) marketing and entrepreneurship task force in 1989, and the Special Interest Group
of the AMA that emerged (Hills et al., 2008).
EM as entrepreneurship in marketing management focused on using marketing
processes to recognize new market opportunities and then to leverage innovation in the
marketing mix to most effectively exploit economically attractive market opportunities.
Essentially, research belonging to this school suggests that EM is a different way of doing
marketing. EM as marketing management emphasizes a proactive orientation that
encourages a business to be first to recognize or create opportunities and exploit them
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innovatively. For example, Morris et al. (2002) argue that entrepreneurs will make use of
marketing activities ‘as a means of creating change and adapting to change’ (p. 6).
An understanding of how entrepreneurs make marketing decisions has also contributed
to the development of EM as theory. Sarasvathy (2001) presents a unique model of
developing new business units or the creation of a new firm. Rather than adopting the
conventional causal logic, effectuation theory examines how, when making decisions
under uncertainty, entrepreneurs may choose between ‘many possible effects using a
particular set of means’ (Sarasvathy, 2001, p. 245). As such, entrepreneurs bypass the
traditional approach of marketing as presented in most conventional texts, starting with a
specific set of means or resources and working back from there.
EM harnesses the power of effectuation to create new uses for existing products, new
products, and new markets (Sarasvathy, 2001). Without entrepreneurial expertise,
managers and owners are inclined to rely on predictive and generic information when
making marketing decisions (Read, Dew, Sarasvathy, Song, & Wiltbank, 2009), which
limits their ability to be innovative and create value in uncertain environments.
EM also requires businesses to explore anticipated and latent needs, by attempting to
lead and shape, and not to follow the market (Berthon, Hulbert, & Pitt, 1999; Miles &
Darroch, 2006). Such approaches need to consider how to trade off investments in the
currently, potentially profitable, ‘known’ business of better meeting existing customer
needs, with the more risky and potentially more costly investments in developing future
approaches to meet anticipated and latent needs (Miles & Darroch, 2006). Morris et al.
(2002, p. 7) suggest that ‘EM incorporates the need for creative approaches to customer
acquisition, retention and development’ and that a ‘philosophy of customer intensity
produces a dynamic knowledge base of changing customer circumstances and
requirements’. Such a philosophy, they argue, is essential in ensuring that entrepreneurial
ventures are prepared for evolving and latent customer demands, something which can be
restricted by the lengthy and detailed marketing planning processes favoured by traditional
marketing theory. One of the characteristic EM behaviours is to make ‘marketing
decisions based on daily contact and networks’ (Hills & Hultman, 2005), which has also
been recognized as a characteristic of growing SMEs whose marketing expertise has
evolved from being simplistic to more sophisticated over time (Carson, 1990).
Morris et al. (2002) argue that, unlike traditional marketing, the focal point of EM is
not on the transaction or the relationship shared with customers, but on the availability of a
good or service which can deliver benefits valued by the customer. The focus of EM is
therefore innovative value creation, which can be acquired by identifying unmet customer
 6 M. Miles et al.

demands and by combining resources in unique ways to provide distinct value for
customers. Innovation is an inherent part of EM and has become a critical component of
competitive advantage in contemporary marketplaces (O’Dwyer et al., 2009). Being
innovation-focused involves not only products, new ideas, and seeking potential for
improvement and change (Bessant, 2003; von Stamm, 2003), but also instilling a
pervasive attitude that facilitates firms looking beyond the confines of the present to create
the future (Ahmed, 1998).
Recognizing the intimate relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation,
Morris et al. (2002) reasoned that when EM is embraced, marketing becomes integral to
sustainable innovation. When firms adopt an EM orientation, they adopt a philosophy that
encourages a steady stream of new marketing ideas, which can be translated into valuable
product, service, and technological improvements which can result in benefits both for
customers and the firm (Morris et al., 2002; O’Dwyer et al., 2009). In exploiting
innovative opportunities there is a need for a marketing management approach that
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identifies, acts, and realizes new combinations of resources and market needs in order to
benefit from future economic potential. Risk management requires careful resource
leveraging to ensure that entrepreneurial marketers ‘are not constrained by the resources
they currently have at their disposal’ (Morris et al., 2002, p. 7). Instead, often drawing
upon reciprocal relationships with others in their networks, firms are able to leverage
resources and relationships to expand their restricted resource base while incurring
minimal costs. In accordance with this perspective, EM leverages resources by
incorporating Vargo and Lusch’s (2004) notion of value co-creation and service dominant
logic, where customers are often integrated into the production process of the product
(Kasouf, Darroch, Hultman, & Miles, 2008).
There has been much discussion in the literature regarding entrepreneurial risk-taking.
Many early studies identified risk-taking as a characteristic of entrepreneurial activity
(Burgelman, 1983; Carland, Hoy, Boulton, & Carland, 1984). More recently researchers in
the field recognize that entrepreneurs engage in calculated risks (Collinson & Shaw, 2001;
Gilmore, Carson, & O’Donnell, 2004). Morris et al. (2002) indicate that when an EM
orientation is adopted, it encourages an approach to allocating and managing resources
which allows firms to respond quickly and flexibly to changing market conditions, lessen
vulnerability, or modify the environment. This reduces the risks associated with tying
resources too closely to specific product markets and technologies and instead encourages
flexibility by combining resources in different and unique ways, in line with dynamic
capabilities theory (Coltman, 2007; Teece, 2007).

EM as relationships and networks in SME marketing

Research relating to EM has also evolved from the study of SMEs in the UK by researchers
such as Birley (1985), Carson (1985), and Carson and Cromie (1989), and concurrently in
Scandinavia through the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group’s work on
networks and interactions (Duss, 1997; Håkansson, 1980; Hakansson & Ford, 2002;
Håkansson & Snehota, 1989), and relationship marketing by Gronroos (1990) and
Gummesson (1994). This work was central to an emerging European and Scandinavian
perspective of EM that was further developed by Coviello and Brodie (1998), Hultman
(1999), Gilmore and Carson (1999), Bjerke and Hultman (2002), and Hultman and Shaw
(2003).
Since the 1970s, government policy in the UK recognized the value of SMEs to the
economy and this lead to many studies of SMEs. This school of EM thought developed
 Journal of Strategic Marketing 7

from inductive studies, observing how SMEs (largely in the UK) actually conduct
business, make decisions, and operationalize marketing activity. These observations and
in-depth investigations were recorded, classified, and resulted in propositions which have
contributed to the debate and evolution of ideas regarding EM. Carson’s (1985) early work
published in the European Journal of Marketing was seminal and stimulated marketing
scholars in the UK to begin to consider the differences in the marketing practices of large
corporations with relatively abundant marketing capabilities and the marketing practices
of SMEs with relatively weak marketing capabilities in terms of how they plan and do
business. These differences were extended in the work of Carson and Cromie (1989),
Gilmore and Carson (1996, 1999), and Carson and Gilmore (2000). This stream of
research identified how SME owner-managers do marketing and the unit of analysis was
primarily the owner-manager. Studies indicated that SME owner-managers adapted
marketing to suit the needs and resources of an SME to specific markets against the
background of a competitive marketing environment. In essence, SME owner-managers
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developed their own style of marketing, which has often been described as EM. In addition
to the influence of the owner-manager and the propensity to grow the business, the findings
of such studies illustrated that the size and resources of the company did impact upon how
business was done.
The SME literature has built upon and been intertwined with the work of the IMP
Group in investigating how networks and networking are used to facilitate EM. Other
research examining the use of networks by international new ventures (see for example
Coviello, 2006) has also been instrumental in the development of EM theory, given that
many international new ventures start as small firms and rely on relationships and
collaboration to break into new markets. Indeed there is a plethora of work related to
networking, marketing, and the SME (Conway & Jones, 2012; Gilmore & Carson, 1999;
Shaw, 2012; Shaw & Conway, 2000). Many studies have argued that entrepreneurial
owner-managers typically do not use conventional marketing processes; instead they
adapt marketing activities to suit their own situation and network with relevant industry
and market contacts (see for example Gilmore & Carson, 2007; Read et al., 2009). The
entrepreneurial owner-manager will often use their peers and business contacts to sound
out business ideas and gather information (Gilmore & Carson, 1999; Harrigan et al., 2011;
Keskin, 2006; Lamprinopoulou & Tregear, 2009), and will consciously seek out
information from certain individuals believed to be useful to them. This is particularly
useful in seeking out new opportunities or identifying ways in which the firm can be more
innovative (Shaw, 2003). Although a large portion of the EM literature cites the use of
networking by SMEs, some authors consider networking as a stand-alone activity used by
SMEs to access resources, rather than a specific EM tactic (Sullivan-Mort et al., 2012).
Regardless, networking helps the entrepreneurial owner-manager gather information that
is useful in supporting decisions, aid his/her assessment and evaluation of any market
situation or opportunity, and help in maintaining awareness of market-related issues
(O’Donnell, Gilmore, Carson, & Cummins, 2002; Rocks, Gilmore, & Carson, 2005).
Taken together these networking activities enable a firm to adapt and refine their
marketing strategy.
One example of how SMEs adapt traditional marketing frameworks is their
management of customer relationships (CRM). SMEs are characterized by their CRM, and
they exhibit flexibility and adaptability in managing relationships with customers that
larger organizations cannot match (Harrigan et al., 2011; Stokes, 2000). Unlike the formal
software-driven CRM in larger organizations, SMEs tend to carry out the most
fundamental of CRM activities through personal networking and face-to-face interactions
 8 M. Miles et al.

(Stokes & Wilson, 2010), made more effective through the adoption of technologies such
as social media (Harrigan, Ramsey, & Ibbotson, 2012). The point is that SMEs do CRM
intuitively; it is integral to doing business and most SMEs survive by managing CRM.
Thus, although the CRM known to the SME is different to that known and implemented by
larger organizations, it is difficult to suggest that it is any less effective. This is evidence of
an entrepreneurial way of doing marketing (Harrigan et al., 2011).
During the past 15 years, e-technology and new media have facilitated entrepreneurial
firms in expanding their marketing activities. The use of the Internet and the emergence of
social media have created a new channel of communication – ‘word of mouse’ (Stokes &
Nelson, 2013). It can be a cost-effective option and allows SMEs to reach a wider market
or to reach a specific target market (Gilmore & Carson, 2007; Harrigan et al., 2011, 2012),
and can be used in conjunction with other business activities. E-marketing activities allow
entrepreneurial owner-managers to communicate information about their products and
services more widely with less expense, to answer customer queries in several languages if
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need be, to use social media as a marketing tool, and to provide online quotes (Gilmore,
2011; Harrigan et al., 2011, 2012). E-marketing leverages the entrepreneur’s resource,
enhancing value by customer co-creation, and often creates new relationships with
correspondingly new resources (see Kasouf et al., 2008).

EM as marketing in entrepreneurship
The third school of thought is EM as marketing in entrepreneurship and this has been
driven by strategic management scholars such as Covin and colleagues (see Covin &
Covin, 1990; Covin, Slevin, & Schultz, 1994; McDougall, Covin, Robinson, & Herron,
1994) and Morris and colleagues (see Morris & Paul, 1987; Schindehutte, Morris, &
Kocak, 2008). This school viewed marketing as a tactic and function of advantage- and
opportunity-seeking strategic entrepreneurship (see Hitt, Ireland, Camp, & Sexton, 2002).
The key themes to emerge in relation to marketing in entrepreneurship are the importance
of opportunity recognition and innovation to generate economic rent (Miles & Darroch,
2006).
For a business to grow it needs not only the owner-manager’s desire for growth, but
there also need to be opportunities to pursue and management activities that will lead to
the discovery of such opportunities. These opportunities 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 (Hansen, Shrader, & Monllor, 2011;
Hulbert et al., 2012; Shane, 2003). Some studies of entrepreneurs discovered that the
majority of opportunities for SMEs lie in the market place and are not a direct consequence
of environmental change (Alvarez & Barney, 2008; Hulbert et al., 2012). EM requires
constant searching for significant sources and scope for growth opportunities. Often this
knowledge is acquired and exploited through the entrepreneur’s network ties and
relationships. In the high-technology sectors, external relationships with customers
provide young entrepreneurial firms with valuable knowledge that lead to competitive
advantages in new product development, technological distinctiveness, or sales cost
efficiency (Yli-Renko, Autio, & Sapienza, 2001). From a strategic marketing and strategic
entrepreneurship perspective, sources for new opportunities come from an understanding
of the marketplace itself (customers, competitors, and suppliers), together with the
business environment in which that market operates. By proactively exploring market
opportunities that may exist within current markets or that seek to expand into new
markets, businesses can remain competitive, prepare, and plan for the future.
 Journal of Strategic Marketing 9

The link between marketing and entrepreneurship within this school of thought stems
from Morris et al. (2002, p. 6), who suggest that the ‘recognition and pursuit of opportunity
is fundamental to entrepreneurship, and is a core dimension of EM’. They argue that when
EM is embraced, an external focus and continuous external scanning become critical
marketing activities essential to identifying current, future, and latent demands. This, they
argue, distinguishes EM from traditional approaches to marketing, which encourage heavy
concentration on the demands of current customers.
Many studies have also illustrated that the combination of innovation, risk-taking, and
proactivity is evidence of EM (McDougall & Oviatt, 2000) at a strategic level. EM is
dependent on having the appropriate organizational culture, one which embraces wealth
through innovation and the exploitation of opportunities (Nasution, Mavondo, Jekanyika,
Matanda, & Ndubisi, 2011). This requires decision-makers within an organization to take
some calculated risks, to have autonomy, and to be proactive. Organizations need to be
proactive in gathering market information on customers and competitors and innovative in
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terms of reconfiguring resources to formulate a strategic response and then have the ability
to implement the response which entails some risk and uncertainty (Barrett, Jones, &
McEvoy, 2003). EM firms that favour innovation and change as a basis of competitive
advantage illustrate that EM has been embraced at a corporate strategic level.

Locus of EM
The EM literature has evolved and grown based on studies from different sizes of
organization and in different geographical regions. For example, the historical starting
point of EM literature was looking at the commonalities between marketing and
entrepreneurship, inductive studies, which investigated how SMEs do business and
typically observed and asked SME owner/managers how they do marketing were
conducted. Drawing from the earlier schools of thought where the EM theory has evolved
from, this paper proposes that EM has an integrative strategic role in firms. An analysis of
the pervasiveness of an entrepreneurial orientation (EO) within the firm has been well
articulated by Wales, Monsen, and McKelvie (2011). Adapting Wales et al. (2011) we
propose a typology of where EM could be manifested within a firm through a framework
that explores the organizational pervasiveness of EM as: (1) vertical – a top management,
upper echelons dimension; (2) horizontal – EM as a process exclusively for the marketing
functional area; and (3) temporal – EM as simply a stage of the evolution of marketing in
an organization or a market, as introduced in Table 2.

The vertical locus of EM: EM as strategy

The pervasiveness of EM can be considered from the vertical dimension of an
organization. This perspective suggests EM is a top management level construct and a
strategic disposition of management. The original perspective of EM is that it is an
overarching business philosophy held by the entrepreneur and top management team (see
Morrish, Miles, and Deacon’s, 2010, work on EM and the interrelationship between
customer and entrepreneurship centric focus). This entrepreneur and top management
perspective of EM was established by scholars such as Mintzberg (1973, p. 44) who
formalized an entrepreneurial mode of strategy making as driven by ‘one strong leader
(who) takes bold, risky actions on behalf of his organization’. Mintzberg (1973, pp. 45 –
46) further notes that strategy is made through ‘centralized power in the hands of the chief
executive’, and that ‘his organization’s goals are simply the extension of his own . . . ’.
 10 M. Miles et al.

Table 2. Locus of EM.

Locus Role of EM Areas of focus Illustrative example

Vertical As strategy
EM as a disposition of the P&G’s incoming CEO in the late
top management team 1990s forced the product managers
EM fundamentally must to ‘burn the boats’, give away IP,
reflect both the needs of the and stop supporting the big brands
customer and the entrepreneur to become more innovative
EM as strategy making
heuristic
Horizontal As culture EM residing across functional 41 Below Vodka’s social media and
and process areas and business units CRM strategy for marketing
EM being a process that is
adopted across the organization
as culture
Temporal As response As a stage in the evolution WalMart’s entry into health, organic.
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of marketing within an and now locally produced food

organization
As a strategic response to
environmental turbulence
Source: Adapted from Wales, Monsen, and McKelvie (2011).

Other scholars’ work such as Covin and Slevin’s (1989) embraces the conceptualization
that entrepreneurship is driven by top management. Covin and Slevin (1988, p. 218)
reinforced this perspective of the role of top management by stating that:
Entrepreneurial firms are those in which the top managers have entrepreneurial management
styles, as evidenced by the firms’ strategic decisions and operating management philosophies.
Hambrick and Mason (1984) proposed the notion of an upper echelon theory that helps
explain why the actions of a firm often mirror the orientation of the top management team.
Chaganti and Sambharya (1987) found that the upper echelon perspective suggests a
strong and positive relationship between characteristics of upper management and the
strategic orientation of the firm. Without top management being willing to take bold risk
accepting innovation, entrepreneurial initiatives could not being supported (see Kuratko,
Covin, & Garrett, 2009, p. 464).

The horizontal locus of EM: EM as culture and process

Another perspective is that EM is an organizational-level phenomenon that penetrates the
culture of a firm – shaping the firms behavioural tendencies to pursue often risky, radically
disruptive product, market, business model, or process innovations in the pursuit of
competitive advantage – and, in turn, infects other functional areas in addition to
marketing. This firm-centric perspective has been dominant since Covin and Slevin (1991)
developed their model of entrepreneurship as firm level behaviour (Basso, Fayolle, &
Bouchard, 2009). Hamel (2000) also advocates a firm-centric perspective of entrepreneur-
ship suggesting that throughout a firm there are highly innovative, creative people with
ideas and the desire to create new products, markets, value propositions, and businesses
that are often disruptive to the firm’s current business model and functional horizontal
structure.
This firm-centric perspective of EM has, at its foundation, the assumption that
employees at all levels of a firm and in all functional activities can be actively engaged in
innovative and customer value creation and that this will be facilitated by a supportive
 Journal of Strategic Marketing 11

organizational culture. Like the work of Deming (1981) in quality management (see for
example Hackman & Wageman, 1995), and the work of McCarthy and Perrault (1993) on
the integration of a customer-centric marketing focus throughout the firm, EM as an
organizational construct suggests that ‘EM is everyone’s job’ and, if formalized, and taken
to the extreme, could transform into an management process where every employee is
asked to become more creative and innovative, take more risks, and be more willing to
take bold competitive actions in the pursuit of creating satisfaction and value for the
customer and the organization. This view is echoed by who comments: ‘marketing process
includes all resources and activities that have direct or indirect impact on the
establishment, maintenance and strengthening of customer relationships, irrespective of
where they are in the organization’. Some years previously, Gummesson (1991) had
named this phenomenon the ‘part-time marketer’, as most of the staff [in his example of a
service firm] may be in direct contact with the market (Bjerke & Hultman, 2013).
A horizontal locus of EM encourages the creation of the part-time entrepreneurial
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marketer.
This firm-level perspective of EM suggests strategy can be shaped by creative
autonomous behaviour that emerges within the organization from employees within the
firm (Burgelman, 1983; Mintzberg, 1978), and that this type of opportunity-seeking
behaviour can be developed into a process where EM becomes pervasive throughout
and across an organization. The horizontal dimension of EM requires both cultural
tolerance of risk, innovation, and a proactive approach to business; and clear management
support in terms of capability building, design, and technology development, finance, and
marketing. Autonomous, emergent EM initiatives support an organizational perspective
of EM.

The temporal locus of EM: EM as strategic response

The temporal dimension of entrepreneurship has many conceptualizations from a phase in
a firm’s life cycle (Kotler & Keller, 2006) to a strategic response (Slevin & Covin, 1990,
1997). Lumpkin and Dess (1996, p. 136) attempt to ‘make a distinction between the
concepts of entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Orientation’ by noting that EO ‘refers to
the processes, practices, and decision-making activities that lead to new entry’, or the first
step in being entrepreneurship, while ‘entrepreneurship is the act itself of new entry’. EO
is, likewise, an antecedent to entrepreneurship in Lumpkin and Dess’ (1996)
conceptualization. Kotler and Keller (2006) suggest a stage model of EM, where
successful organizations tend to revert to an EM perspective to renew their competitive
market position. In a similar vein, Duss (1997) suggests that there is an ‘entrepreneurial
marketing concept’ that is the fifth evolution of a series of business-wide overarching
management philosophies that include: (1) production concept, (2) product concept, (3)
sales concept, (4) marketing concept, and (5) EM concept.
In addition to a stage model of the temporal dimension, EM could be a response to
environmental change and turbulence. For example, Slevin and Covin (1990) suggest that
firms may cycle between being entrepreneurial and being bureaucratic depending on the
level of environmental hostility and turbulence. Likewise, Miles and Darroch (2006)
suggest that the importance of EM processes changes as the organization’s market
offerings move through a cycle of creating and recreating competitive advantage. For
example, during the phase where a firm attempts to establish a competitive advantage, EM
processes become paramount. However, once an advantage is established, EM processes
become less important with respect to traditional marketing management capabilities.
 12 M. Miles et al.

Conclusion
In this paper EM was presented as an alternative perspective to more conventional and
administrative approaches to marketing (Hills et al., 2008; Morrish et al., 2010). Following
the identification of three schools of thought, this paper suggests three potential locus of
EM within the firm: (1) vertical – EM emanates from top management as intended
strategy or from within the organization as emergent strategy, (2) EM as a culture and
process at a horizontal functional level within an organization, and (3) EM as a temporal
phenomenon – like opportunistic antibodies that lie dormant in an individual organism
until needed, EM may be an organizational ‘autoimmune’ response to high levels of
environmental stress. Interestingly, like a dysfunctional human autoimmune response to
diseases such as Lupus that constantly motivates the production of antibodies to subdue
the ‘non-existent’ invading bacteria, a constant high level of EM might actually be harmful
to strategy and performance (see Covin & Miles, 2007, for a similar discussion pertaining
to the case where a firm strategy becomes too entrepreneurial). Wales et al.’s (2011)
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insights into the organizational pervasiveness of entrepreneurship have great potential to

guide future research into the locus of EM in organizations.
Hunt (2010) provides the tools to frame a discussion on the efficacy of EM as a useful
construct for business scholars. For Hunt (2010), theory exists to explain and potentially
predict phenomena and consists of a set of a ‘systematically related set of statements,
including some law-like generalizations, that is empirically testable’ (Rudner, 1966,
p. 10). For the scholarly understanding of EM to advance, EM as a body of literature
should be assessed in future research based on four questions: (1) is EM itself or these
propositions a set of systematically related statements or simply a catch-all phrase for non-
traditional marketing? (2) are there any law-like generalizations within the body of EM?
(3) can the premises of EM be empirically tested, and replicated to test for
generalizability? and (4) do these EM propositions help scholars understand and predict
the marketing actions of firms?
The first criteria – is EM a set of systematically related statements? A majority of
papers that claim in some way to be related to EM do seem to be based on marketing
processes that create or discover opportunities, strategically assess opportunity without
regard to the firm’s set of resources or capabilities, and accept the risk of leveraging
innovation to proactively exploit the attractive opportunities by creating some form of
positional advantage – often by being a market pioneer, adopting innovative internal
processes, or frame-breaking business strategies (see Hills et al., 1997; Miles & Darroch,
2006). The notions of risk acceptance, innovation, and pro-action are embedded in this
assumption.
The second question pertaining to the formation of law-like generalization in EM can
only be answered by considering Hunt’s (2010) criteria to be a ‘law-like generalization’,
which includes (1) generalized conditionals, (2) empirical content, (3) nomic necessity,
and (4) systematic integration. Within the literature that is broadly classified as EM there
are an increasing number of studies that offer ‘if – then’ generalized conditional
statements, empirically testable propositions, with O’Cass and colleagues as examples of
this work (O’Cass & Sok, 2012; O’Cass & Weerawardena, 2009; Sok, O’Cass, & Sok,
2013). O’Cass and colleagues have been systematically integrating their work and
empirically testing these related EM propositions using advanced quantitative methods
such as SEM, Amos, and PLS suggesting that at least some EM research has begun to
satisfy the criteria for classifying EM as having ‘law-like generalizations’ (see for example
Darroch & Miles, 2011; O’Cass & Sok, 2012; O’Cass & Weerawardena, 2009; Sok,
 Journal of Strategic Marketing 13

O’Cass, & Sok, 2013). Similarly, the recent work of Sullivan-Mort et al. (2012) focuses on
linking EM strategies to performance outcomes of born global firms. Their empirical
examination of this question has clear implications to advancing the EM field, in particular
by identifying four key EM strategies that lead to superior firm performance (Sullivan-
Mort et al., 2012). Further empirical work testing EM propositions will significantly
contribute to the schools of EM thought identified earlier in this paper.
The third question, can the propositions developed in EM be tested, has been addressed
by the high-quality empirical work published over the past few decades by authors such as
Di Benedetto, O’Cass, Song, and others (see for example O’Cass and Ngo, 2011; Song, Di
Benedetto, & Parry, 2009; Song, Droge, Hanvanich, & Calantone, 2005; Song, Wang, &
Parry, 2010). However, this still leaves the last question largely unresolved – can what is
now considered EM literature help explain and predict marketing actions and
performance? While the emergence of high-quality empirical studies by Di Benedetto,
O’Cass, Song, and others has advanced the understanding of EM (building upon the work
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discussed earlier), prediction, as in most social sciences, has remained elusive.

The ultimate test of theory is can it help explain or predict? (Hunt, 2010). EM is
advancing towards theory construction and testing. The more studies that clearly develop a
systematically related set of testable research propositions and then test these propositions
using sound methodologies, the more likely EM will be able to exhibit some level of
explanatory power. The three schools of EM thought have contributed to the advancement
of EM thinking in unique ways. For example, EM as relationships and networks in SMEs
has largely provided many of the original conceptualization of EM, while EM as
entrepreneurship in marketing and EM as marketing in entrepreneurship has produced
scholars that have adapted marketing and strategic management concepts to EM problems
and used empirical methods to attempt to falsify generalized propositions. Despite the
advancements made, there is still much scope for further research.

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