Anatomy of competitive advantage: towards a contingency theory of entrepreneurial marketing

Abstract

Entrepreneurial marketing (EM), born out of the practice of firms operating in conditions of uncertainty, is emerging as a powerful alternative to cope with the decreasing effectiveness associated with traditional marketing. In this article, the authors provide their collective position regarding the field of EM. A brief history and conceptual background of EM is presented and the contextual differences that have shaped its evolution are considered. Distinctions between traditional and EM are derived based on discussions of the concepts of size, speed, market, opportunity, risk, and uncertainty. The perspective of value co-creation in uncertainty is used to develop a contingency framework to serve as the foundation towards a general theory of EM. Operand and operant resources and environmental conditions are proposed to moderate the EM process from opportunity recognition to entrepreneurial organization, EM, and temporary competitive advantage. The theoretical facets are illustrated with seven propositions and directions for future research.

Keywords:

• entrepreneurial marketing
• value co-creation
• opportunity recognition
• opportunity exploitation
• competitive advantage
• entrepreneurial orientation

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Sussie Morrish for her encouragement and guidance in the development of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

The authors equally contributed to the creation of this article and are listed in reverse-alphabetical order. Fourteen of sixteen members of the Global Research Symposium on Marketing & Entrepreneurship (GRSME) Advisory Board and all but one of the officers of the American Marketing Association's Entrepreneurial Marketing Special Interest Group (AMA EMSIG) contributed to this article. However, the views expressed belong to the authors and do not represent those of the American Marketing Association or GRSME.

^1. Email: [email protected]

^2. Email: [email protected]

^3. Email: [email protected]

^4. Email: [email protected]

^5. Email: [email protected]

^6. Email: [email protected]

^7. Email: [email protected]

^8. Email: [email protected]

^9. Email: [email protected]

^10. Email: [email protected]

^11. Email: [email protected]

^12. Email: [email protected]

^13. Email: [email protected]

^14. There is no unified view on what makes a firm small, medium, or large. As with much else, the US appears to hold an expansive view of small business with fewer than 500 employees whereas the European Union defines a medium-sized business as one with fewer than 250 employees and a small business as one with fewer than 50 employees (Hansen & Eggers, 2010). While the EU definition appears to be more commonsensical than that of the US, there is something to be said about the importance of industry context, for example, 60 employees in a labor-intensive sector does not really qualify to be a medium-sized firm. Overall, it appears that market share-based delineation is much more appropriate since it can be compared across sectors, that is, < 1% market share embryonic/micro, 1–5% small, 5–10% medium, >10% large firms (Uslay et al., 2010).