Administrative Marketing vs Entrepreneurial Marketing - Essay Example

Literature Review on Administrative Marketing Vs Entrepreneurial Marketing LITERATURE REVIEW ON ADMINISTRATIVE MARKETING VS ENTREPRENEURIAL MARKETING Although entrepreneurship and marketing are regarded as separate disciplines of academia, various schools of thought exist within managerial and marketing scholarly communities. According to Ruzzier and Hisrich (2013: p33), marketing research has mainly focused on large corporate organizations with relatively abundant resources, overlooking the resources and skills that more entrepreneurial-oriented firms have to employ in the face of capacity limits, resource constraints, and different business objectives as they seek a competitive advantage through marketing. This latter form of marketing, also called entrepreneurial marketing, is more about a unique spirit of marketing than a single strategy of marketing, which sets it apart from more administrative or traditional marketing practices. Rather than adhere to the fundamental traditional marketing principles meant for large and generally well-established firms, entrepreneurial marketing uses unorthodox and new practices aimed at gaining market share for the entrepreneurial firm in a crowded market (Ruzzier & Hisrich, 2013: p34). Indeed entrepreneurial firms are more successful as a result of unconventional marketing. Brettel et al (2010: p8) note various points of difference between entrepreneurial marketing and more traditional administration marketing with regards to their management structure, commitment and control of resources, opportunity-recognition and commitment ability, and strategic orientations. Hills et al (2010: p11) concur, noting that the strategic orientation of entrepreneurial marketers showed a strong zeal and commitment to marketing and concluding that successful entrepreneurs do not behave in a sequential or rational manner that administrative marketing theory assumes. Rather, entrepreneurial marketing is always in contact with the market, while the preference of consumers is always in their mind alongside their vision thinking constantly on ways to enhance customer value. Nasution et al (2011: p340) add that entrepreneurial marketing adapts to new competitive advantage opportunities through without being constrained by their conceptualised strategy as administrative marketing tends to do. For entrepreneurs, marketing is viewed as different fragmented factors influencing the performance of sales, instead of comprehensive, coherent, substitutable, and strategic variables of demand, including the marketing mix used in traditional marketing. Most successful entrepreneurs often ignore traditional constructs of marketing in their best practices, such as cognitive marketing models normally found in leading marketing texts (Nasution et al, 2011: p341). During their daily marketing actions, entrepreneurs also place added emphasis on finding a balance between selling and marketing, rather than primarily adopting the more traditional definition of marketing that warns against an orientation on selling. Hansen and Fabian (2010: p49) find that entrepreneurial marketing is more driven by opportunity than administrative marketing, arguing that the former creates new market opportunities and product by innovating domains, strategy, process, or products. Marketing and entrepreneurship are present at all levels of an entrepreneurial marketing organization, which focuses the organization on the recognition and leveraging of opportunities. Taking a bigger interest in this aspect of entrepreneurial marketing, Nwankwo and Gbadamosi (2011: p51) explore the mechanisms that entrepreneurial firms use to recognise opportunities and reports that the mechanism used is intrinsically tied to entrepreneurial behavior. Majority of successful entrepreneurs are more oriented to creation and exploitation of opportunities, with more focus on meeting all the consumer’s needs through innovation and creativity. This is in contrast to administrative marketing, which proposes more formalised activities of market research. Instead, the environment in entrepreneurial marketing is analysed through the perception of the entrepreneur and will be reinterpreted constantly as they increase market interactions (Miles & Deacon, 2010: p311). Similarly, Kraus et al (2012: p12) state that two entrepreneurs within the same market will rarely act in the same manner, specifically because they perceive, analyse, and determine possible opportunities in completely different business spaces despite being in the same business environment. This is an aspect of marketing that is not accounted for by fundamental theories and principles of traditional marketing. On the other hand, Morrish et al (2011: p122) are more interested in how entrepreneurial and administrative marketers commit marketing resources, finding that entrepreneurial firms rarely conduct formal market planning. In addition, very few entrepreneurial firms have a conceptualised, written strategic or marketing plan. This is unlike the more traditional administration marketing, in which strategic marketing plans are required in committing resources to marketing. Instead, entrepreneurial marketing is more intuitive in decision-making for marketing, while a few do apply analytical techniques. In addition, entrepreneurial firms operate with limited structures or specialised management functions, which McAuley (2011: p166) argues fosters faster information exchange and decision making due to customer proximity. However, administrative marketing relies on engages in formal planning and market research. Kraus et al (2014: p283) point out that administrative marketing and entrepreneurial firms have differing criteria for decision making with the former driven to achieve profit, return on investment and other financial goals especially for public-traded, large firms. On the other hand, entrepreneurs generally mix personal preferences and goals in their decision-making, which is evidenced by the firm’s growth since there is potential for this marketing goal to be dramatically influenced. Indeed, Morrish (2014: p72) notes that entrepreneurs would be irrational if they eschewed their highest priority objectives in order to adhere to set out marketing principles models as in administrative marketing. Unlike in traditional marketing, entrepreneurial marketing rarely makes the assumption that a growth in sales is desirable. Building on this argument, Mort et al (2012: p553) find that these differences can be explained rationally from a personal-objectives perspective, such as deciding not to make marketing investments to attain growth or not to delegate responsibility and control to workers so as to grow. Moreover, entrepreneurs are more likely to be uncomfortable with issue connected to the management of larger groups of employees, as well as be more concerned about retaining the firm’s financial control, which are normally embedded in psychological and personal feelings not found in more traditional firms with employed executives (Mort et al, 2012: p554). Gilmore and Morrish (2011: p139) adds that availability of funds generated internally is a significant influence on marketing goals, as well as growth of the firm, although not as important for entrepreneurial marketing as it is for administrative marketing. For many firms, this potential hurdle can be overcome through good relationships with banking organizations. Kraus et al (2010: p24), on their part, approach marketing from the perspective of management structure, stating that most high-growth firms tend to emphasise the important nature of adaptability and flexibility and are prepared to expend all efforts possible in satisfying their customers’ preferences. High-performing organizations are, in fact, more willing to incur significant costs and to implement all required changes so as to fulfill the wishes of the customer and each phase of the individual order (Kraus et al, 2010: p25). In addition, these organizations regard the ability to rapidly make decisions and quickly adapt as critical strategic objectives and capabilities. Although traditional administrative marketing cites the importance of customization and flexibility, these aspects are particular crucial in entrepreneurial marketing. References McAuley, A. 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