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The aim of this paper is to develop an understanding of the value and application of entrepreneurial marketing within the French wine industry.

Following an initial review of the literature describing the nature of entrepreneurial marketing and its potential application within the wine industry, a case study is presented of a small independent winery of the Côtes du Rhône in order to explore the theory and practice of entrepreneurial marketing in this commercially important French wine growing region.

The marketing approach adopted by the case company is found to contrast with the traditional adversarial approach to competition prevalent throughout the French wine industry. The case study illustrates how entrepreneurial marketing has allowed the leverage of superior knowledge of customer preferences, market intelligence and product knowledge in the process of delivering superior value to the customer through brand differentiation at firm level. Additionally, engaging in cooperative relationship development at regional and international level appears significant in creating opportunities for knowledge acquisition and innovation.

The research provides interesting insights into the potential value of the adoption of entrepreneurial marketing by small wineries in France.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the entrepreneurial marketing (EM) and small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) brand management knowledge. It explores the brand management practices of four entrepreneurially driven market innovators. The authors add theoretical and practical insight by distinguishing the brand management approaches of small- and medium-sized firms.

The authors use purposive sampling to select 15 producers of high or medium value-add from the food and beverage industry. Data include secondary sources and two rounds of in-depth interviews, first, between the project leader and CEO/founder of each company and, second, between members of the project team and functional managers of the organisations. Data were coded, analysed and agreement reached between the co-authors.

Four firms were characterised as having integrated brand orientation (Wong and Merrilees, 2005) and as using market innovation as an EM practise. All four use brand management practices for the purpose of positioning, differentiation and communicating brand identities, values and associations to customers. The smaller companies concentrate their practices on building and communicating identities. The medium-sized firms exhibit greater management of risk by building positive brand associations, controlling brand identities, leveraging alliances and creating separate brand identities for new products.

This paper offers three original insights. First, that market innovation can be considered EM and is used by entrepreneurial SMEs. Second, smaller SMEs have a reductive and pragmatic focus on developing and communicating brand identities. Finally, medium-sized entrepreneurial organisations use risk management in their branding strategies by utilising strategic alliances and creating separate brand identities for new products.

This paper aims to understand the process of initiating ingredient/component (IC) branding from the supplier's perspective. It proposes modeling entrepreneurial orientation (EO) as an antecedent factor and differentiation abilities (functional and reputational) as mediators. Investigating IC branding from the supplier's perspective is critical given the cost and risk associated with implementing such a strategy.

A total of 5,254 manufacturing companies were screened to identify IC supplier firms that meet certain criteria. Survey data were collected from 77 top managers (Chief Executive Officers or Chief Marketing Officers) of IC supplier firms. The paper uses partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and SPSS in analyzing data.

The results indicate that IC branding is a complex strategy – one involving a number of steps that need to be taken in a specific order. More specifically, results indicate that IC branding starts with EO exerting a positive influence on IC functional differentiation ability (FDA). FDA facilitates reputational differentiation ability (RDA), which in turn encourages the supplier to initiate IC branding.

This paper addresses an important gap by studying the process through, which suppliers initiate IC branding.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how branding can facilitate small business development of new ventures.

A conceptual approach was used for understanding branding in new ventures. A model with eight propositions has been developed and then validated using ten existing case studies of exceptional entrepreneurs.

The key mechanisms proposed for branding to assist small business create new ventures include opportunity recognition, innovation, business model development, capital acquisition, supplier acquisition, customer acquisition, and success harvesting.

The paper helps redress a relatively lack of research into small business branding. Previous research has mainly focused on small business brand management of existing ventures. The findings are readily translatable to small businesses launching new ventures. The paper extends the existing small business branding literature into a new domain, having a strong entrepreneurial character.

The purpose of the study was to develop and test a model explaining visual artists’ levels of commitment to their primary distributors (dealers, agents, gallery owners).

A questionnaire was completed by 220 British artists covering their relationships with the main external intermediaries they used most frequently. The questionnaire covered the elements of a structural equation model designed to predict commitment levels. The model included as mediating variables the strength of an artist's personal brand and the individual's control over, dependence on, and conflict with a distributor.

Most of the respondents had good relationships with their distributors. The hypothesised model provided a sound fit with the data, although there was no significant connection between an artist's ability to control a distributor and the person's commitment to the distributor.

The research was undertaken in a single country and only visual artists (rather than, for instance, performing artists) were considered. Space restrictions prevented the detailed examination within the questionnaire of the participants’ relationships with different types of intermediary.

Artists should cultivate powerful personal brands and apply ‘relationalist’ approaches when dealing with distributors.

The study was the first to apply marketing theories of distribution to the arts domain. A new and original measure of the extent of a visual artist's personal branding activities was devised and employed as a part of the investigation.

This paper aims to outline a corporate entrepreneurship growth strategy for large consumer packaged goods (CPG) firms that involves venturing with brand entrepreneurs to access innovative or disruptive new brands called “strategic brand venturing” (SBV).

An emerging development among large CPG firms known for their branding and marketing prowess has been to create dedicated brand/consumer venturing units (e.g. Coca‐Cola; P&G; Nestle; Clorox; General Mills; Unilever) as a means of enlarging their innovation boundaries. As president of an SBV unit for The Coca‐Cola Company, the author notes this recent development and opportunity. He provides a descriptive account of its nature, strategic value, and organizational considerations.

Researchers are encouraged to empirically examine this new option in further depth.

The capabilities and organizational considerations involved in establishing an SBV unit are briefly outlined.

External corporate venturing in technology‐intensive industries is an established and growing practice. However, equity investments by large CPG corporations in entrepreneurial brand firms represent a corporate entrepreneurship opportunity that has hitherto received scant/no attention in the literature. A revised typology of brand growth strategies is therefore proposed encompassing venturing.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a growth strategy and a conceptual model for large consumer packaged goods (CPG) firms that involves venturing with brand entrepreneurs to access innovative or disruptive new brands called “strategic brand venturing” (SBV). It aims to ground the model conceptually using the intersection of three domains: entrepreneurship, strategic management, and marketing.

An emerging development among large CPG firms known for their branding and marketing prowess has been to create dedicated brand/consumer venturing units (e.g. Coca‐Cola, P&G, Nestle, Clorox, General Mills, Unilever) as a means of creating new growth horizons. The paper notes this recent development and opportunity. It offers a conceptual explanation of how to think about this using domain intersection literature and a practice‐based description of the dimensions involved in executing such a strategy.

The paper is conceptual and practice‐oriented. No fieldwork was conducted. However, the work is based on industry practice and a longitudinal participant observation within a Fortune 100 firm over a five‐year period.

Researchers are encouraged to empirically examine this new option in further depth.

The capability dimensions needed to execute are outlined.

External corporate venturing in technology‐intensive industries is an established and growing practice. However, equity investments by large CPG corporations in entrepreneurial brand firms represents a corporate entrepreneurship opportunity that has hitherto received scant/no attention in the literature. A conceptual model is proposed based on industry practice but grounded in a novel use of domain intersection literature to encourage further action and research.

The purpose of this research is to identify non‐sector‐specific brand and reputation‐based factors that distinguish successful entrepreneurs and small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) from their larger counterparts. These distinguishing factors provide the building blocks for a theoretical (resource‐based view) model for demonstrating the pivotal role of brand, organizational identity (OI), and reputation building for large enterprises and small businesses in knowledge economies.

To explore (theoretically) and explain (empirically) observed reality through qualitative investigation. This approach conceptualises and explains reality, and puts forward empirical findings as representations of theoretically postulated relationships between entrepreneurial success and brand/OI/reputation. The primary data are from in‐depth interviews with a sample of firms located in Staffordshire/West‐Midlands/regions, UK.

Suggest that branding and reputation building are key resources, which allow an organization to be successful over an extended period of time. In terms of research design and methods, we found that an interdisciplinary approach is important in further exploration of the nexus between brand/organization identity/reputation and entrepreneurship. Because they are fuzzy concepts loaded with meaning and interpretations, they are explored better through qualitative data in the first instance. These findings are germane for paradigmatic development to distil the ideas, explanations and the reality that binds the concepts (brand/organization identity/reputation).

This work is original and innovative because it goes beyond inductively derived “theory” to an unswerving location of brand, OI, and reputation within commensurable theory at the heart of successful market strategy for SME organizations. Supporting empirical observations, development of coherent conceptual framework and theoretical rigour mark out this work as beyond those identified within previous studies.

The present study sheds light on the role of strategic orientations (SOs) in explaining business growth. The purpose of this paper is to examine how different SOs, namely learning orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and brand orientation simultaneously affect business performance measured with brand performance, market performance and business growth in SME context and whether these effects vary across countries.

An extensive data set of 1,120 effective responses is collected from two European countries, namely Hungary, representing a post socialist rapidly growing market, and Finland with a stable, highly developed and competitive economy. A multigroup moderation analysis is conducted. Confirmatory factor analysis is used in testing measurement invariance, subsequently followed by structural equation modeling procedure used in testing research hypotheses developed on the basis of a literature review.

The results show that entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and brand orientation have a positive effect on business growth in SMEs in both Hungary and Finland through brand and market performance. With regard to learning orientation, a positive yet somewhat weak effect on growth is found only in the Hungarian sample. The moderation analysis reveals that country moderates several of the hypothesized paths from SOs to business performance.

Prior studies on SOs have mainly focussed on single orientations at any given time. However, researchers increasingly argue that many firms are better off if they build their strategies on multiple SOs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first empirical studies to address multiple (four) SOs in the same research model. Furthermore, little is known about if and how the performance effects of different SOs vary across countries.

Consumer product firms renowned for marketing appear to be complementing brand creation, extension and acquisition with minority equity investments in entrepreneurial brand ventures (EBVs) for strategic purposes. Similarly, EBVs are looking for growth and resources that can be accessed via inter-organizational partnerships. This flourishing industry practice and the paucity of empirical research indicates the potential for new studies. The research objective was to examine why and how large incumbents were implementing strategic brand venturing (SBV), and with this understanding to develop a framework useful for descriptive and normative purposes.

This qualitative research study comprised in-depth interviews and multiple data sources across seven case studies drawn from US subsidiaries of global firms within the consumer products industry. Grounded in resource theory, the dimensions of strategic brand equity investments are abductively derived.

The findings delineate 16 process capabilities within four aggregate clusters entailing, the designing of the SBV program, opportunity identification, brand entrepreneur partnerships and venture portfolio management. Prefaced by endogenous and exogenous antecedents, these process capabilities help to contribute strategic and financial value when implemented.

This qualitative research study yielded analytical rather than statistical generalizations. A range of market and economic factors exist in the United States contributing towards a favorable entrepreneurial and brand incubation climate. This may render the SBV concept as contingent and contextual. Furthermore, the view of brand entrepreneurs' regarding the design of the process model were not explicitly sought but inferred from the discourses of the venturing units interviewed.

The article outlines several important implementation imperatives for corporations endeavoring to competitively advantage their brand portfolios via adoption of a minority equity investing strategy in EBVs. Practitioners are cautioned against myopically adopting this process alone as a success heuristic given other factors may impact success such as changes in corporate strategy or upper echelon sponsorship.

Mission preservation for social brand ventures being tethered to a large incumbent may need to be taken into account prior to and during SBV relationships.

The research contributes to the call for greater insights into the investment processes used in venturing relationships as well as coverage of new industry sectors beyond technology industries that often characterize corporate venture capital studies. Several novel findings emerged related to the importance of—the industry ecosystem; symbiosis between the founding brand entrepreneur and brand culture; synchronization of investment strategies with an emerging brand life-cycle model and serendipitous corporate entrepreneurial opportunities.