Introduction
Entrepreneurial marketing continues to intrigue researchers, scholars, and students, with new topics within the subject continuing to be uncovered through different approaches. The Journal of Business Research accepted for publication the article “Effective Entrepreneurial Marketing on Facebook – A Longitudinal Study” by Fink, Koller, Gartner, Floh, and Harms (2018). While Facebook has become an established social-media outlet and has already attracted numerous studies, there has only been choice research using specific methods, which makes the article by Fink et al. (2018) intriguing.
The authors present the use of two-wave longitudinal methods to test “long-term effects of social-media-based entrepreneurial marketing on purchase intentions” as pioneer research, questioning the influence of celebrity endorsement over a four-year course (Fink et al., 2018, p. 2). Measuring and comparing this article against more established and tested findings in different fields of entrepreneurial marketing thus poses an assured interest.
The Significance of the Article
Before attempting to analyse an article, it is necessary to identify what kind of change it is trying to bring about within the scholarly community and the field with which it is concerned. Facebook has garnered attention both positive and negative for its marketing tactics, with often low-quality products occupying the platform’s advertisement spaces (Chaston, 2016). Despite this, the article by Fink et al. (2018) has opted to deal with this significantly critiqued issue in an attempt to look beyond the public’s reaction and deal directly with the mechanism’s effectiveness. Therefore, the significance of this article is rooted not only within the influence on the scope of the entrepreneurial market but also concerning student’s understanding of the topic chosen.
Implications for the Entrepreneurial Marketing Interface
Any study becomes a reflection of its topic, highlighting the developmental trends and possibly predicting the future turn of events within a field. Effectively, entrepreneurial marketing (EM) “attempts to underline the company’s major strengths while emphasizing the company’s value to the customer,” becoming not a single-use tactic but a more broad strategy (Ismail & Zainol, 2018, p. 651; Qureshi, Aziz, & Mian, 2017).
It has already been proven that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) becomes contingent on a company’s market orientation (MO) and vice versa, resulting in effective coaction of resources in the event of orientation coincidence (Lee, 2016; Whalen & Akaka, 2015). Therefore, the unity of EO and MO within a company should allow a product to achieve an increased degree of success, especially for its first performance (Ahmadi & O’Cass, 2015). Taking into account the effects and consequences of using social media platforms within the scope of such a strategy becomes fundamental to predicting the results of a chosen marketing entrepreneurship approach.
Social media has become an essential circumstance of life, for some even replacing paper-based journals, newspapers, news outlets, and even television. Facebook is a platform that has created a vast network of friends-of-friends, with information travelling rapidly and recommendations being based on association with people, pages, and likes (Lodish, Morgan, Archambeau, & Babin, 2016). Proving that celebrities can increase the desire of people to buy a good, but only those who are fame-conscious and product-knowledgeable becomes an essential step in success prediction (Fink et al., 2018). Therefore, furthering any possible knowledge on the topic of product public reception through effectively increasing the list of possible success-failure factors becomes an essential step in EM.
Personal Affinity
The novelty of the research is its clear advantage, especially as it implements tested methods to research new topics and subtopics, effectively developing EM. The fact that “entrepreneurial marketing via social media in particular, [is a] quite young phenomena compared to traditional marketing initiatives” makes its establishment through research an important formational strategy (Fink et al., 2018, p. 7).
The advancement of EM as its own subject with its particular theory and methodology, rather than a crude symbiosis of entrepreneurship and marketing strategies, has remained an essential topic throughout its development (Miles, Gilmore, Harrigan, Lewis, & Sethna, 2014). Therefore, showing an interest in such a subject attracts the attention of other researchers and contributes to the active detachment of EM as a separate discipline.
Assessment against Research
The chosen article endures a comparison against the conclusions of pre-dating studies on the topic of digital media, EM, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Effectively, the results of the study by Fink et al. (2018) align with findings in a different sphere, which state that “digital marketing offers tourism SMEs increased opportunities to innovate on an unprecedented scale” (Jones, Alford, & Wolfenden, 2015, p. 12).
The extent to which SMEs may participate in specific markets and entrepreneurial tactics is directly dependent on their size, which makes extensive research on the topic crucial to their development (Cacciolatti & Lee, 2015). Halal food, as an example of an SME good, has shown a positive reaction within the market concerning EM investment (Fard & Amiri, 2016). Therefore, the possibility of the articles positive appraisal and assured effectivity becomes possible through tying together the different findings of multiple studies on this topic.
Despite the benefit of the chosen article on EM as a branch of knowledge, it has its drawbacks and specifics. While the study aligns with the thesis that EM is the expression of “creativity… networking and flexibility,” it does not deal with the problems that networking may pose on the structure (Nouri, Imanipour, Talebi, & Zali, 2017, p. 2; Fink et al., 2018). The negative influence a celebrity, or behaviour that may prove detrimental to their status, may have are not explored and therefore not accounted for, rendering the study a stepping-stone in social media examination.
Conclusion
Implementing the findings of the chosen article in an SME environment becomes problematic because small companies rarely have the chance to attract widely recognized celebrities. However, on a regional level, using famous local people and without aspirations to large-scale product advancement, it is possible to use the results of the chosen article effectively. While this approach will require a sufficient Facebook following base within a localized region, it may prove a success factor for SMEs.
References
Ahmadi, H., & O’Cass, A. (2015). The role of entrepreneurial marketing in new technology ventures first product commercialisation. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 24(1), 47-60. Web.
Cacciolatti, L., & Lee, S. (2015). Entrepreneurial marketing for SMEs. London, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chaston, I. (2016). Entrepreneurial marketing: Sustaining growth in all organisations (2nd ed.). London, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fard, M. H., & Amiri, N. S. (2016). The effect of entrepreneurial marketing on halal food SMEs performance. Journal of Islamic Marketing, 9(3), 598-620. Web.
Fink, M., Koller, M., Gartner, J., Floh, A., & Harms, R. (2018). Effective entrepreneurial marketing on Facebook – A longitudinal study. Journal of Business Research, 1-9. Web.
Ismail, M., & Zainol, F. (2018). A review on the evolution and definition of entrepreneurial marketing. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(5), 649–663. Web.
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Lodish, L., Morgan, H., Archambeau, S., & Babin, J. (2016). Marketing that works: How entrepreneurial marketing can add sustainable value to any sized company. Old Tappan, NJ: Pearson Education.
Miles, M., Gilmore, A., Harrigan, P., Lewis, G., & Sethna, Z. (2014). Exploring entrepreneurial marketing. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 23(2), 94-111. Web.
Nouri, P., Imanipour, N., Talebi, K., & Zali, M. (2017). Heuristics and biases in entrepreneurial marketing: Some new insights. International Journal of Entrepreneurship, 21(3), 1-9. Web.
Qureshi, M., Aziz, N., & Mian, S. (2017). How marketing capabilities shape entrepreneurial firm’s performance? Evidence from new technology based firms in Turkey. Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, 7(15), 1-15. Web.
Whalen, P., & Akaka, M. (2015). A dynamic market conceptualization for entrepreneurial marketing: The co-creation of opportunities. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 24(1), 61-75. Web.