Editorial

Citation

Deacon, J. (2014), "Editorial", Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 16 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRME-09-2014-0020

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Volume 16, Issue 2

At a recent meeting of the Academy of Marketing Special Interest Group for Entrepreneurial and Small Business Marketing (AM SIG), a discussion took place that centred on the “Charleston Summit” paper by Hanson and Eggers (2010). The Charleston summit was a gathering of minds in many ways, and the outcome, so eloquently captured by Hanson and Eggers, has become widely cited, and its contents used as a basis for much further work.

The reason for referring to it here is that, for me, a significant outcome of the summit was the development of a framework for research in Entrepreneurial Marketing, and this was at the centre of the discussions at the AM SIG. Such a framework can guide researchers and also assist in positioning our (often challenging) research in relation to more “normative” and Administrative Marketing research, the ability to position our work in this way is essential to ensure that we are developing new theory, intellectually challenging the normative view and evolving a true entrepreneurial marketing (EM) paradigm. Without these tenants, I suspect that the EM field will remain (or be kept) somewhat at the periphery of the marketing domain.

Therefore, I repeat here the four perspectives of the framework – as both a reference point for existing researchers and a start point for researchers new to the EM domain (Table I).

Table I. Perspectives of the framework

Many scholars will know that I unashamedly like to work within the development of perspective 4; however, this publication publishes work from across and within all four of the perspectives, and will continue to do so!

The editorial thus far may now bring fourth the question: why this particular introduction to Volume 16:2. The answer has three distinct strands to it:

• In reference to the above discussion at the AM SIG, it struck me (and not for the first time at a scholarly gathering) that many researchers new to the EM field struggle to position their work within the wider literature and probably spend a lot of energy and intellectual capacity defending their position – a position that the above framework has already defended.

• Five years on from the “Charleston Summit” there are calls for scholars to assemble for another summit, the concept of a quinquennial review is one that this journal would support, a meeting that has as a focus the development of the domain and stands somewhat separate to the global “research”-led meetings that are now well established.

• I would like to think that as you read the assembled papers within this edition of the Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship (JRME) that they fall within the perspectives outlined above.

Our first paper comes from Gross, Carson and Jones, and in keeping with my editorial musings, they too return to the Hanson and Eggers “Charleston paper” and the four perspectives outlined above. Their conceptual paper presents a “fresh” approach to enable: “a mechanism that allows academics and practitioners alike to disseminate and understand how patterns of entrepreneurial marketing come to life through practice”, in doing so, they are further developing “unique interface concepts” and go further to propose areas for future research at the interface – I suspect that this will become a highly cited paper in due course.

The second paper in this edition is presented by Roach et al., where they seek insight into how market-oriented culture interacts with market-oriented conduct, especially in organisations where there is a presence of an innovative culture, they go on to examine how the interface between culture and conduct impacts upon the value creation potential of the firm. This is a valuable paper from both the perspective of the development of insight into the interface between culture and conduct and the fact that they use a heterogeneous sample of firms in the manufacturing and technical services sectors. Similarly, the third paper of this edition looks at market orientation and especially market creation. I would welcome more papers that explore the interface between EM and theories of market creation, and I hope that this paper will stimulate both a response and debate. As an academic, this paper presented here by Lewis et al. interests me – but as a country boy, it also holds interest for me, as many small-scale agri producers small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) operate EM to their advantage, and we as scholars sometimes overlook the research insights that could be gained from their approach to “going to market”. Thus, as Lewis et al. state in their introduction:

[…] this paper proposes that fresh produce branding represents an attractive and exploitable opportunity for agri-food value chains to disrupt traditional market strategies using an entrepreneurial marketing (EM) approach, leveraging strategic innovation by branding fresh produce.

The paper for me is also a reminder of the antecedents of the marketing discipline – borne as it was out of a desire to know more about the economics of the agri-sector.

From single-sector studies, we then turn to a single case study. Miles, Fillis and Lehman provide a fascinating study that “illustrates the explanatory power of entrepreneurial marketing (EM) as a theoretical framework” by explaining how the Museum of Old and New Art near Hobart, Tasmania, created by a professional gambler can flourish in a geographically remote and economically depressed region. This is both a robust theoretical paper and one that I think could be of great value as an EM teaching case.

Pascoe and Mortimer, to some extent, maintain our theme of “deviant behaviour” with a paper that explores the possibility of identifying potential entrepreneurs thorough their use of risk-taking activities: “the research examines the motivations of individuals to engage in deviant consumer behaviour, in this case illegal downloading and the link between this behaviour and possible entrepreneurial characteristics”. The authors go on to suggest that if there were a way to identify potential entrepreneurs through this methodology then more targeted support could be made available to them – they state that this is the first in a series of papers on the subject – and I look forward to reading more on this very interesting area in future editions.

Finally, a paper from a researcher new to our domain. Philip Roundy presents a paper that explores the area of social enterprise and the people behind such initiatives; he develops insight into how such ventures acquire resources and does so through a methodology based upon narrative discourse. This type of methodology is one that the JRME has been keen to publish, as it allows for a depth of enquiry and a granularity of data generation that is a must if we are to truly understand the individual meanings and practices of entrepreneurial marketers. I hope that we will read more of Philips work in the future.

The JRME upholds the founding editor’s ethos that we should be; a conduit for interesting and stimulating scholarly research at the interface between entrepreneurship and marketing, and that experienced and new researchers are treated with equity and that innovative methodologies are welcomed – indeed encouraged. To that end, I am delighted to say that the JRME continues to grow at about 40 per cent per annum – evidence I think of the fact that we are proud to publish interesting work, undertaken in interesting ways by interesting people – the type of work presented in this edition!

Jonathan Deacon

Reference

Hansen, D. and Eggers, F. (2010), “The marketing/entrepreneurship interface: a report on the ‘Charleston Summit’”, Journal of Research in Marketing & Entrepreneurship, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 42-53.