Specialized marketing capabilities and foreign expansion of the international new ventures

ABSTRACT

The study examines specialized marketing capabilities’ role in the early internationalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Emphasis is on sales and communication capabilities and on contrasting international new ventures (INV) from the mature economy of Italy and the posttransformation economy of Poland. Individual expert interviews, including a card-based game, and an entrepreneurial marketing conceptual framework were conducted with representatives of seven manufacturing INVs. The findings obtained through content analysis of interviews with CAQDAS software show how the main specialized marketing capabilities contribute to early expansion of INVs through an interaction with architectural marketing capabilities.

KEYWORDS:

• International new ventures
• specialized marketing capabilities
• entrepreneurial marketing
• two-country study

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and remarks which enabled correcting the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ According to the European Union’s SMEs definition, their annual turnover is equal to or below €50 million and a balance sheet total is equal to or below €43 million (https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/business-friendly-environment/sme-definition_en, accessed on May 15, 2019).

² EMICO is an acronym of Entrepreneurial, Market, Innovation, and Customer Orientation (R. Jones & Rowley, 2009).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, grant: “The entrepreneurial marketing concept and accelerated internationalization of new ventures. Antecedents, elements and outcomes,” no. 2015/19/B/HS4/01728.