Editorial

Citation

Deacon, J.H. (2010), "Editorial", Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 12 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jrme.2010.48412aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Volume 12, Issue 1

A little over ten years ago, the first volume of this journal was published by a group of like-minded scholars drawn primarily from participants of the University of Illinois at Chicago Research Symposium (USA) and Academy of Marketing’s Special Interest Group (UK), who shared an interest in the behaviour of owner, manager, entrepreneurs at the interface between the research disciplines and the practice of marketing and entrepreneurship.

Those of us who have subsequently become immersed in this research area owe these early research pioneers a great debt of gratitude. As editor, I thought that it would be both of interest to existing scholars and to new researchers in our field to occasionally invite the authors of seminal papers that have appeared within the Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship (JRME) to revisit their earlier thoughts and comment on them from a contemporary perspective – this I think is apt as we pass our tenth anniversary of scholarly activity at the interface within this publication.

This edition therefore revisits some of the papers and one of the inaugural commentaries published in the very first edition but also considers the future of research at the interface.

Volume 1 contained two commentaries on the, state of research at the interface. The commentaries were written by the two founding editors of the journal: Professor Gerry Hills of the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA and Professor David Carson, University of Ulster, UK. It is telling of the insight contained within these two commentaries that ten years on scholars and students of both marketing and entrepreneurship cite these papers as seminal pieces and in many ways they remain of critical importance to the development of research at the interface. In this issue, I have asked Professor David Carson to revisit his thoughts of ten years ago – thoughts that when I read them first compelled me to pursue a career of academic endeavour – his revisitation has confirmed in my mind that I have made the right choice and I sincerely hope that they will in their contemporary form stimulate others to seek marketing insights within small firms. Professor Gerry Hills has agreed to undertake a similar review within the forthcoming volume.

Professor Audrey Gilmore (University of Ulster, UK) has also accepted my invitation to revisit a paper that was co-authored in Volume 1 with Professor Nicole Coviello (Wilfred Laurier University, Canada). In this updated and valuable piece, Professor Gilmore looks back at the methodologies that have been used for research at the interface over the past 25 years and concludes that: “research at the interface is alive and well”, commenting that whilst “large strides” have been taken in the methodologies used there remains many opportunities to develop innovative research design to enable insight given the fact that “researchers from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Asia and Africa have joined the MEI interest group”.

The third paper taken from the first edition comes from Professor Andrew McAuley (Griffith University, Australia) who updates his original 1999 work by analysing research into SME internationalisation and compares the findings to the review that appeared here in 1999 to observe if research directions suggested then, have been implemented. In my mind this research is of great value to those scholars who study the history of and changes within the aspirations of small businesses as it clearly shows how globalisation is no longer the preserve of the larger firm.

My sincere personal thanks to Professors Carson, Gilmore and McAuley for their contributions to this edition.

Having revisited some of the research first presented ten years ago this edition then moves to report on how the past will direct the future of research within the domain. Earlier in 2010 Dr David J. Hansen (College of Charleston, USA) with the assistance of Dr Fabian Eggers (San Jose State University, USA) called a summit held in Charleston, South Carolina, USA to discuss the past and future of the marketing/entrepreneurship interface. Their review here summarises the main discussions from the three-day summit and concludes with a series of research implications and suggestions that I am sure will become as cited as the initial commentaries of 1999. Scholars in marketing, entrepreneurship and the interface are encouraged to direct their students towards this paper when they seek research topics and projects, authors are encouraged to consider the suggestions as they represent a more than suitable departure point for potential articles for this journal as we move forward.

The final two papers in this edition represent something of the spirit of the journal and its approach to publication. The first of these is a paper by Brian Grinder, Vincent J. Pascal and Robert G. Schwartz. It was a version of this paper that I first saw in the proceedings of the UIC Symposium and the novelty of “going back to the future” with research concepts appealed in the way in which the history of marketing and entrepreneurship has a habit of resurfacing and re-informing the future. Thus, their paper examines the development of the early American clock industry as an entrepreneurial endeavour and focuses on the innovative marketing and financing practices that helped transform the industry during the first half of the nineteenth century – themes that the authors conclude are as apposite in 2010 as they were in the 1810s.

The second paper by C. David Shepherd, Gaia Marchisio, Sussie C. Morrish, Jonathan H. Deacon and Morgan P. Miles explores “entrepreneurship burnout”. In an age where our governments actively encourage (market?) entrepreneurship we must be cognisant of the personal cost to health that can occur in high stress situations – like those found in the legal and medical professions but also within entrepreneurial business. As Shepherd et al. point out: “Entrepreneurs are also exposed to similar environmental and personal stressors that non-entrepreneurs are. As a result they can and do suffer from burnout”. This paper explores this issue and calls for further research into the many constituent factors that bring about burnout – an area as yet under researched at the interface.

In conclusion, I hope that you find the work published here a stimuli for your work and that you will want in time to share your thoughts with the JRME community – I am open to submissions from students and scholars alike and would repeat my advice to consult the “Charleston summit” paper for inspiration and guidance for your submission. In the spirit of further developing the JRME community, I have asked David J. Hansen to step into the role of “social media” editor – as we are embracing and developing JRME via the channels of Twitter and Facebook which can be found at: Twitter – J_RME, Facebook – there is a page called “Marketing and Entrepreneurship”.

My thanks, in closing, to all the authors who submitted papers for consideration in this edition and to the ongoing work undertaken by the Editorial Board and of course, to the publisher of JRME: Andrew Smith of Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. I look forward to receiving contributions, comments and suggestions, and meeting up on Facebook or Twitter. For readers in the Northern hemisphere, I wish you a warm summer, Southern hemisphere readers a warm winter!

Jonathan H. Deacon