The importance of marketing mix planning and customer orientation for venture capital–financed startups: impacts on valuation, performance, and survival
Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship
ISSN: 1471-5201
Article publication date: 12 September 2022
Issue publication date: 2 January 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Existing literature shows that marketing capabilities of new ventures are critical success factors affecting venture capital funding, startup performance and business failure. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether venture capitalists reward extensive marketing strategies in their startup valuation and whether the marketing mix planning and early strategies on customer orientation predict long-term development of startups.
Design/methodology/approach
To address these gaps, this study investigate 107 business plans of new ventures which received venture capital based on these planning documents. The authors use computer-aided text analysis and regression analyses.
Findings
This study’s findings show that customer orientation has positive effects on new venture performance and intensive marketing mix planning increases the likelihood of survival. However, venture capitalists decrease their startup valuation when they read too much about customer orientation and operative marketing mix planning.
Originality/value
This study relies on unique internal documents and therefore provides valuable and new insights for research and practice. Further, this study investigate various short- and long-term effects from marketing and customer orientation for a startups’ development.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors owe special thanks to the eight venture capital funds which support this research project by allowing the authors to analyze their documents. The authors are grateful for their trust. Further, the authors gratefully thank María Vaquero Martín for her thoughts and valuable suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript.
Citation
Woehler, J. and Ernst, C. (2023), "The importance of marketing mix planning and customer orientation for venture capital–financed startups: impacts on valuation, performance, and survival", Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRME-08-2021-0098
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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