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The main purpose of this paper is to explore how small and medium‐sized firms (SMEs) are meeting market needs in their export marketing strategy (EMS).

A combination of research methods were adopted including expert interviews and a survey among 212 SME exporting firms in the manufacturing industry.

The study offers insight into how exporting firms need to consider different market aspects in their EMS. It confirms the importance of product quality and the significance of flexibility in relation to local export markets. The study highlights a need for service to the market, in addition to a need for fulfilling service requirements when the firm is established in the local market.

The research is limited to SMEs in the manufacturing industry.

The paper contributes to the interface between marketing and entrepreneurship in an international context. The managerial implications emphasize the importance of flexibility in the international market entry.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the domain of entrepreneurial marketing (EM) responding to the challenge to EM scholars to more fully develop EM as a school of marketing thought. The paper seeks to argue that the context of the born global firm is an appropriate and novel context in which to undertake this research.

The need to examine the processes of EM justifies the use of case study method. In total, nine born global firms, located in the three most populous states in Australia: Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, were selected for study. The firms were drawn from hi‐tech and low‐tech industry sectors, and included online businesses, in an attempt to capture maximum theoretical variation.

The analysis identifies the four key strategies of entrepreneurial marketing as comprising opportunity creation, customer intimacy‐based innovative products, resource enhancement and importantly, legitimacy. These core strategies of EM are identified by mapping to enhanced performance.

Some may consider the born global context a limitation. Therefore, it is suggested that further empirical research could be undertaken on other cohorts of small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), such as service SMEs, to provide increased insight into the strategies and practices in the domain of EM. Quantitative research to operationalize the EM construct and model theoretical relationships is also suggested.

This paper advances the domain of EM into a new phase by empirically identifying four core strategies of EM. It finds that EM contributes to the achievement of superior performance in small firms through purposeful strategy based an effectuation approach.

Examines the issue of growth within the small firm and considers the main influences that impinge on the evolution of the enterprise. An interpretative methodological technique, causal mapping, is examined, evaluated and used to analyse the decision‐making processes made by the owner‐manager of a small Irish‐owned electronics firm. This method allows the researcher to trace the positive and negative consequences of the decisions on the subsequent growth and development of the company. The role which business and marketing planning plays in such a process is a recurring theme which is given close scrutiny throughout this paper.

This study aims to report on an investigation into decision-making leading to a UK firm’s first export order. It demonstrates the application of appreciative inquiry (AI) as an underutilised research method in marketing investigations.

An AI research approach was undertaken in a firm that had not started exporting at the commencement of the study whereby the interventionist approach allowed the management team to overcome negative perceptions in their decision-making. From a research perspective, marketing decision-making could be understood in real time as opposed to in hindsight.

While the key decision-maker is likely to be the owner/manager in small newly internationalising firms, a variety of factors will affect the decision to start exporting including the influence of the management team. In particular, the management team’s perceptions towards a combination of effectuation- and causation-based decision-making where risk/reward considerations in exploiting various international marketing opportunities are undertaken in light of perceived affordable losses, as well as against evolving objectives.

The contribution is to demonstrate the AI methodology, which to date has received attention in management domains other than marketing; it offers an interventionist approach to help managers overcome barriers and move positively forward in decision-making. It offers researchers an opportunity to understand marketing decision-making in real time.

The purpose of this research is to explore the conception of marketing held by entrepreneurs of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), in comparison with that proposed by researchers using different paradigms (i.e. the transactional, relationship, or inductional marketing). It then seeks to examine the determinants of the entrepreneurs' intention to adopt a marketing approach in their firms.

The research is articulated in a pilot and a main study, which were carried out on a stratified sample of more than 200 Italian entrepreneurs. It adopts exploratory research techniques to investigate the entrepreneurs' perceptions of the marketing concept and applies Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior to quantitatively assess the psychological antecedents of their intention to adopt a “marketing approach” (i.e. what they mean by that).

Results clearly show that the “concept of marketing” as perceived by Italian SME entrepreneurs differs from that proposed by academic researchers and subjective norm (as an indicator of corporate culture) is the main determinant of the entrepreneurs' intention to adopt a marketing approach.

The research stresses that a wide gap exists between academic researchers' and entrepreneurs' conceptions of marketing. The existence of a proper organizational culture can foster the diffusion of a marketing approach among firms.

The research contributes to the literature on contemporary marketing theory and practice, by showing the existence of a need “to market the marketing approach” at least among Italian SME entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize strategic agility in entrepreneurial internationalization and highlight the role of marketing “under particular conditions” – those of early and fast internationalizers.

The study is based on in-depth case studies of four entrepreneurial internationalizers using an inductive approach. The role of marketing is studied along a set of four key business processes, i.e. sensing through selective customer/partner intimacy; business development through selective experimentation and testing; coordination and harmonization of multiple stakeholders; and creative extension of resources.

Strategic agility is a composite of flexibility and selective responsiveness. Marketing thought, mainly through customer and partner interaction, plays a prominent role in achieving strategic agility. Customer- and market-centric thinking needs to be built in a key set of business processes. Marketing’s contribution to strategic agility means an ability to cope with time, relationship and functional dependencies. Strategic agility helps improve the risk profile of the entrepreneurial internationalizer. Entrepreneurial internationalizers are particularly suited to compete on and benefit from strategic agility.

The findings show managers and entrepreneurs in early and fast internationalizing ventures a path to strategic agility which helps to overcome the many parallel challenges that come with firm foundation and internationalization.

Strategic agility is a novel explanation for entrepreneurial internationalization. The study explains the prominent role played by marketing in achieving strategic agility and growth. Strategic agility is reconceptualized in the context of the young and small internationalizing firm.

Social media has been gaining importance in recent years as an integral part of entrepreneurs’ business and marketing strategies. At the same time, the entrepreneurial use of social media can lead to dark and negative consequences. This aspect has received less attention in the literature so far. The purpose of this study is to advice entrepreneurial practitioners to balance the sides of pros and cons as being an inherent reality to acknowledge the full scenario of business life and the interplay of diverse influences.

The qualitative interviews focused on the dark side experiences of micro-entrepreneurs on social media and on strategies to protect their private identities and businesses from those dark side effects. For the theoretical classification of dark side experiences, the framework of Baccarella et al. (2018) was used and adapted based on the experiences reported.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is one of the first to provide an understanding of the negative experiences micro-entrepreneurs face on social media. The research showed the relevance of five out of the seven dark-side building blocks and identified time as a further influential aspect. Thereby, the authors learn to comprehend the negative sides of social media for micro-operated businesses. The findings highlight the need to understand entrepreneurial social media use with simultaneously negative hazards and economic and social challenges. Addressing the entanglement of the entrepreneurial and private selves of micro-entrepreneurs, the findings demonstrate entrepreneur’s attempts of distancing or cleaning the negativity from their private identities and their businesses.

This paper problematizes dark sides as critical elements in entrepreneurial practice, which are too often neglected when discussing entrepreneurial marketing in general and entrepreneurship in social media specifically. The self is always captured between two sides, including the problematic (“dark”) and the bright.

Although earlier research suggests a positive relationship exists between engaging in entrepreneurial marketing activities and firm performance, there may be contingent issues that impact the association. This investigation unpacks the relationship between entrepreneurial marketing behaviour and firm performance under the moderating role of coopetition, in an immediate post-COVID-19 period.

A resource-based theoretical lens, alongside an outside-in perspective, underpins this study. Following 20 field interviews, survey responses via an online survey were obtained from 306 small, passive exporting wine producers with a domestic market focus in the United States. The data passed all major robustness checks.

The statistical findings indicated that entrepreneurial marketing activities positively and significantly influenced firm performance, while coopetition provided a non-significant moderation effect. Field interviews suggested that entrepreneurs’ attemps to scale up from passive to more active export activities in an immediate post-pandemic period helped explain the findings. Owner-managers rejoined trustworthy and complementary pre-pandemic coopetition partners in the immediate aftermath of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) for domestic market activities. In contrast, they had to minimise risks from dark-side/opportunistic behaviour when joining coopetition networks with partners while attempting to scale up export market activities.

Unique insights emerge to unpack the entrepreneurial marketing–performance relationship via the moderation effect of coopetition, namely, with the temporal setting of an immediate post-COVID-19 period. Firstly, new support arises regarding the likely performance-enhancing impact of owner-managers’ engagement in entrepreneurial marketing practices. Secondly, novel findings emerge in respect of the contrasting role of coopetition in both domestic and export market activities. Thirdly, new evidence arises in relation to a resource-based theoretical lens alongside an outside-in perspective, whereby, strategic flexibility in pivoting facets of a firm’s business model needs effective management following a crisis.

Underpinned by a stakeholder-oriented resource-based theoretical lens, this inter-disciplinary study investigates the association between an entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance under different degrees of coopetition (cooperation among rival firms).

Alongside undertaking 20 semi-structured interviews, survey responses were obtained from 302 smaller-sized producers in the American wine industry. The elements of the conceptual model were evaluated via hierarchical regression. Moreover, all major robustness checks were assessed.

Positive and significant relationships respectively existed between an entrepreneurial orientation and coopetition with firm performance. However, a somewhat counter-intuitive finding involved the interaction between these two constructs negatively and significantly influencing firm performance.

Even though employing an entrepreneurial orientation has been long-since linked to facilitating improved firm performance, under-resourced owner-managers of certain smaller-sized enterprises may struggle to implement these activities. In principle, cooperating with competitors can enhance resources/capabilities and lead to mutually beneficial outcomes. Nevertheless, unique insights suggest that the potential exists for coopetition-based networking activities to have detrimental outcomes with respect to entrepreneurially orientated strategies. Consequently, decision-makers are advised to consider the merits of collaborating with their industry rivals, but also be aware of the potential “dark sides” surrounding these behaviours. Furthermore, improved knowledge emerges regarding the stakeholder themes of resource-based theory.