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David Stokes: David Stokes is a Lecturer in the Small Business Research Centre, Kingston Business School, Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, UK
Introduction
The emergence of "entrepreneurial marketing"
Marketing and entrepreneurship have been regarded traditionally as two distinct fields of study. A growing awareness of the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation to marketing, and of marketing to successful entrepreneurship, has recently led to attempts to combine the two disciplines as "entrepreneurial marketing". The first American Marketing Association (AMA) "Research Symposium on Marketing and Entrepreneurship" was held in 1987, and has become an annual event as the AMA's "Research at the Marketing-Entrepreneurship Interface Conference". In the UK, a "Special Interest Group" was established within the Academy of Marketing as a focus for research in this area in 1994 (Shaw and Carson, 1995; Hulbert et al., 1999). The main thrust of entrepreneurial marketing is an emphasis on adapting marketing to forms that are appropriate to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), acknowledging the likely pivotal role of the entrepreneur in any marketing activities. This article follows this theme by proposing a conceptualisation of marketing in the context of smaller entrepreneurial organisations. It focuses particularly on the use of qualitative research methodologies that are emerging as particularly appropriate in this field of inquiry.
The role of the "entrepreneur"
Although there is only limited consensus over what constitutes a small or medium-sized enterprise, there is general acceptance in the literature that "a small firm is not simply a scaled down version of a large firm" (Storey, 1994, p. 74). In particular, the influence of the owner-manager is seen as a key differentiator between small and large firms. Schollhammer and Kuriloff (1979) put forward a personalised management style as a distinguishing feature of small enterprises, typifying it as personal knowledge of all employees, involvement in all aspects of management and lack of sharing of key decisions. Storey and Sykes (1996) attributed this concentration of management to the fact that the owner-manager of a small firm is more powerful, being subject to fewer checks and balances than a large firm counterpart. Given that the personal characteristics of the owner-manager are such a dominant influence, the marketing management of a small enterprise will depend greatly on the marketing competency of the owner....