Entrepreneurial Marketing - Essay Example

?Running Head: Entrepreneurial marketing Table of contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………..2 Research questions…………………………………………………………………3 Literature review…………………………………………………………………..4a Entrepreneurial approaches to promotion………………………………………..4b Guerrilla marketing……………………………………………………………….4c Buzz marketing……………………………………………………………………4d Viral marketing……………………………………………………………………4e Recommendation and conclusion…………………………………………………5 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………6 Abstract The paper gives an alternative conceptualization of entrepreneurial marketing. It gives a review on the issue of entrepreneurial marketing as one of the tools which many business ventures have applied today in the production of goods and services hence can strategize themselves well in the global market. There are so many forms/approaches on entrepreneurial marketing but my interest is on the entrepreneurial approaches to promotion in both advertising as well as selling their products to the customers. This marketing approach has widely been applied by many business ventures both small and large and these businesses have been successful. In my research, have taken a review of the three articles on promotion which include; the guerrilla marketing, buzz marketing and viral marketing as a marketing strategy by entrepreneurs. Introduction According to American Marketing Association (2007, pp 243), entrepreneurial marketing can be defined as business function of marketing its products and services and this is achieved by taking in to account the following aspects: innovativeness, proactiveness, risk taking and the pursuit of opportunities without putting in to consideration the resources currently controlled. Our definition suits both the small and the large scale business ventures who would wish to compete effectively in the large market. Once goods and services have been produced, customers have to be informed about the new product in the market. This is only achieved by coming up with a marketing strategy to put your product in the market. Entrepreneurial marketing describe the marketing activities for both small and large scale business ventures. Given the large share of the economic activities, entrepreneurs have developed a fresh field of research on the marketing strategies which ongoing as well as the new ventures can adopt given the competition in the global market today. EM describes the marketing activities which these firms develop irrespective of their sizes and age (Brotherson 2008 pp142). Our research on entrepreneurial marketing explore that it can be implemented and for any firm to perform well, then it has to put in to consideration the various marketing strategies which differentiate the firm from the others. Many firms today produce similar products and services and the only way entrepreneurs can be able to compete well in the global market is by coming up with marketing strategies and work towards achieving those strategies. Competition in the global market today is stiff hence entrepreneurs need to strategize themselves so that they can compete effectively given the limited resources they have (Chrisnail 2005). According to Aldrich (2007 pp124), it is obvious that most new ventures are not ready to be risk takers, not innovative but more rather imitative. They are not ready to incur any losses but what they do is that, they try to imitate the products ready in the market. A good example to explain this is Sony Company which produces most of the electrical. Other companies/ ventures who are not innovators will go ahead and come up with products with a similar name say Sonny. You will find that most of the illiterate customers will not be in a position to differentiate the original product from the imitated ones since the names are almost similar. According to Klofsten (2007 pp134), this tries to exploit the technological knowledge of its founders. Consumers are exposed to fake products in the market which are sold cheaply compared to the original product hence diminishing the value of the real product. This clearly shows how most of the small business ventures are not risk oriented; the best business for them according to him would be a mailbox whereby customers sent money to. Research questions How entrepreneurship is different from marketing and how the two can be linked together to realize a competitive advantage What is entrepreneurial marketing, how can a business venture come up with a entrepreneurial marketing approach and how has it been beneficial to business ventures today What are some of the marketing approaches commonly used by entrepreneurs Examples of some of the forms of entrepreneurial approaches to promotion How entrepreneurial approaches to promotion has helped entrepreneurs Literature review Entrepreneurial marketing: Entrepreneurial approaches to promotion According to David (2007 pp254), many business ventures are eager to expand their business potentials, their client base and spreading the word about their products and services. The biggest challenge here is the thousands of dollars used to market these products. Yes, it’s financially riskier for any business venture not to market its products and services but there are so many cost effective ideas that these managers can use in order to increase their profits. There is a wide range of cost effective ways which can be used to increase revenues by these people. Many people might see it as a crazy thought but many companies have used these tactics and gone far in their business. With business marketing, it doesn’t matter how many dollars you have in your pocket but all you need is a strategic strategy/innovation for your product in the market. The articles talk about entrepreneurial promotion tactics as one of the marketing strategies the business ventures have adopted (Edmondson 2007 pp1159). Many business ventures argue that entrepreneurial marketing is “not”, but let us now argue that entrepreneurial marketing “might be”. Entrepreneurial Promotion is one of the approaches to marketing. According to Stokes (2008 pp10), Research tells us that promotion can be based on (word of mouth) communication and also recommendation in order to develop a customer base. Many business ventures see this approach as cost efficient than the classical advertising which many entrepreneurs have used today. You find that most of the classical advertisements are done on TVs, radios and prints yet not every body can access all these facilities. This trend of marketing tends to cut at some potential customers who would wish to have that particular product but they can not access it. EM aims at target groups that are not even accessible via the TVs or even these prints. According to Holloway & Plant (2004), EM is grounded on the exponential diffusion of the available communication contents. Information most of the times is not communicated by the company but it’s usually communicated by the customers who purchase a particular product. Once a customer purchases a certain product, whether it is good or bad, the customer has to comment it to another person hence communication is done about this particular product. Customers need to have full information about the products in order to spread the message to other customers. The articles talks about three best known entrepreneurial approaches to promotion. Both approaches see the word of mouth marketing as an effective strategy to be applied by business ventures in order to increase profits. The following are some of the forms of entrepreneurial marketing used by entrepreneurs today (Kraus 2009 pp56). Guerrilla marketing Viral marketing Buzz marketing Entrepreneurial marketing in the domain of promotion Form marketing characteristics Guerrilla marketing: its characteristics include: bootstrapping and creative use of the locally available resources plus a highly targeted mix of effective and innovative communication all at a low cost Buzz marketing: It involves customer generated information and it’s commonly distributed via the verbal means and more especially through recommendations through personal networks Viral marketing: This is a self replicating promotion and mostly it multiplies so fast like a flue virus over the community webs and its more internets oriented Guerrilla marketing According to Levinson (2007), guerrilla type of promotion stands for a variety of low cost and high impact marketing techniques which assist most of the small companies or even individual owners to compete well with the large companies in the global market. In real sense it involves low utilization of the locally available resources achieved by acting like a guerrilla, you know the guerrilla tactics. To explain guerrilla marketing well Davies (2005) explains that the three articles uses the Vodafone emblem on a streaker’s naked body of an Australian football match among many examples. This made public attention on the Vodafone product and went through the media hence many people all over the world were in a position to know this particular product. Research tells us that guerrilla marketing techniques is a creative marketing strategy which requires the business ventures to be more innovative considering the new technology today which has become so much expensive for small business ventures to purchase according to (Morgan 2007). It is cost effective considering the meager resources business ventures have to go for technical marketing strategies used by large business owner’s toady. It only requires a business venture to come up with a good plan/well thought idea on how to compete effectively in the competing market with the available and limited resources the entrepreneur has (James 2007 pp45). Buzz marketing According to Ahuja (2007), this is yet another form of mouth to mouth marketing and it arose due to the wide range of concerns by many customers been critical towards the classical advertising. It involves stimulating the recipients by use of spectacular actions that the product in the market becomes the subject of discussion or even to say a “gossip” in town. What this particular form of promotion implies is that it normally uses the cell phones and internet in order to generate a “buzz” towards this particular product and the actual advertising is left to the customers. What happens is that for instance, it can be an event or even a certain activity which cause ruckus thereby advertising the product to the members of the public. It helps in building publicity and information to the public who see this particular product hence this leads to brand building of your product. According to Cotton & Range (2007 pp89), 67% of most of the companies products in UK are sold by buzz since buzz is initiated by the media campaigns and the media distributes this particular product to the market at no cost. The biggest strength with this form of marketing is that it has a high credibility since many people never trust advertising as such as statements from people they know. According to Litosseliti (2004), Buzz marketing is not restricted to small or even the new firms but it suits well the small firms with limited resources to market their products globally. For instance, in the case of the international consumer goods company, “Procter and Gamble” founded a Tremor Inc and it basically specialized on the word of mouth advertisement. This company builds up a panel which had over 250,000 youths and they received the newest information on the current movies, products and music. These teenagers then forwarded these messages to their friends and the company realized more sales that season. The members of the public could access this particular information spread by the teenagers hence the new products where advertised by the company (Kolb 2008). Viral marketing According to (Phelps 2005), this form of marketing applies the social networks like friends, family members and neighbors in order to attract some attention towards a particular product in the market and even spreading messages mostly through word of mouth marketing the way a flu virus is spread. This approach involves spreading of messages to the members of the public through honest and voluntary communication by customers themselves so that they can be in a position to acquire more customers. According to (Creswell 2007 pp23), the advantage with this form of marketing to the new business ventures is that it’s cheap to communicate to the potential customers via the internet and emails when the messages are forwarded from one customer to the other. Viral communication as many can see it impersonal marketing (lacking face to face marketing) and using a high technology. A good example to illustrate viral example according to (Phelps 2005) is the “Mohrhuhnjagd” (Grouse Hunt) which was used by Johnnie Walker Liquor Company as one of the entrepreneurial marketing approach. This is one of the ever known marketing approaches and it has grown concerns about this particular liquor. Many people all over the world could access this particular advert hence marketing the company’s product so well. The company has been in a position to compete so well hence in the last years, it accrued so many profits hence increasing its competitive advantage. This particular game was advertised through the internet, TVs and newspapers by word of mouth. This particular advert made this particular game to be more popular in the media hence advertising the product to the public (Siemens 2005pp10). Recommendation and conclusion Entrepreneurial marketing by small and large business ventures is a type of marketing that needs to be innovative, risk taking, proactive and one that focuses on available opportunities and can be performed without resources currently controlled. In order to provide a set of norm strategies in different contexts, understanding of EM in depth would be more important for any small or even large business firm and this is important for future researchers. EM according to research is a key to success but the biggest question comes when a business venture has to choose on a certain marketing approach to advertise his products. Pursuing empirical research is important in EM in order to build up a basis for evaluations of the many theses which have been formulated on the current literature. An in depth review of entrepreneurial marketing is essential and there is still more research on what entails this approach. Business managers have the role of coming up with marketing strategies geared towards a achieving a certain goal. Entrepreneurs need to differentiate themselves from the others in order to be able to compete well especially now when markets are competing globally. Innovations are a key to success whereby the business ventures whether small or large have to be creative and proactive when coming up with business ideas concerning their products and services. References Ahuja, H. (2007) ten perceptions of disclosure in Buzz marketing. Journal of consumer marketing, Vol 10(7) pp 142-154 Aldrich, K (2007) even dwarfs started small: Liability of age and their strategic implication. 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International journal of instructional Technology and distance learning 2 (10) Stokes, K. (2008) Marketing approaches. A practical approach to marketing journal, Vol. (10(1), pp265-354 Read More