Editorial

Citation

Deacon, J.H. (2012), "Editorial", Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 14 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jrme.2012.48414baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Volume 14, Issue 2

Welcome to the Autumn issue of JRME. At first sight there appears little to “knit” the work, here presented, together. However, I hope that after reading the work you will agree with me that the common themes throughout are of challenge, exploration and context. The papers challenge much of the “accepted” views of marketing and entrepreneurship (along with a few other management disciplines), a tradition that is welcomed within this journal. The papers also explore – in that much of what is presented here takes existing entrepreneurial marketing (EM) understanding and attempts to clarify and focus our field of view – such evolution of concept strikes me as being a sign of a healthy and valuable knowledge eco system and reinforces the growing strength of EM as the pre-eminent force in entrepreneurial and marketing theory development. I think you will also agree that the papers in this edition offer what I would call a granularity of context – in that they offer insight both at a theory level but also a socio-economic level, where the concept of “homo economicus” is fully developed at the interface.

The opening paper from Roy and Banerjee investigates the concept of “strategic branding” in an Indian context and within the business to business markets with a focus upon the automotive components sector. This paper is of interest to scholars at the interface as it acknowledges that first small firms within the rapidly developing economies (RDEs) of the BRICSA nations are central not only to the development of a robust economy but are also critical for achieving wider social change and development goals. Second there is insight here of the rapid evolution of marketing and entrepreneurship practice and behaviour within the small firms of the study. What interests me, when looking at studies such as this, is the way in which entrepreneurial firms within RDEs have adapted theory to suit their individual context – and how frequently their outcome practice mirrors that of small firms within mature economies. Banerjee and Roy conclude with a useful model – one that I hope will stimulate response and further debate.

The second paper in this volume undertakes a comparative study of EM approaches used within the tourism and hospitality sector of the East Peninsular of Malaysia. Jaafar identifies that within this sector the majority of operators are sme’s and as such operate EM in context – and in this case the difference between the urban and island operators. I hope that you will find the discussion section of the paper as interesting as I have, there are a number of insights here that lend themselves to future collaborative work and cross national studies, further there are many aspects of the paper that would be of value to explore with students – which I encourage you to do. The conclusion of the study contains insight into the motivations and psychology of entrepreneurs – much based upon context but also increasingly on sustainability.

Dowell et al. explore networks in their cross comparative study of Celtic cousins: Wales and Ireland. They report on the sustainable learning networks ireland/wales (SLNIW) project. The SLNIW project is an INTERREG 4A EU funded programme, developed to increase the skill set of entrepreneurs. The geography and economic base of both regions are somewhat similar being primarily rural and where the tourism and hospitality and agricultural sectors are central to economic well being. Thus, the importance of networks and indeed the depth of networks are explored, however this paper has further importance as the authors develop “Network Member Typologies” (NMT). This has importance because as EM theory continues to be developed there is value in re-visiting extant understanding and attempting to gain a depth of insight that to date has remained unexplored – such exploration can add much needed contextual granularity to our discipline and I hope for researchers new to our field this study will both inspire thought and stimulate further NMT research.

Somewhat continuing the theme of review and then further development of extant theory, Simone Guercini presents a conceptual paper (although based on a longitudinal study of Italian fashion entrepreneurs) further exploring the application of experimental psychology (EP) and behavioural economics to EM. The paper explores the concept of heuristics in entrepreneurial decision making and develops such a view from the entrepreneurs perspective as opposed to the “customers” perspective – Guercini offers scholars at the interface a particularly interesting discussion on EP showing the evolution of thought in the field from Simon to Kahneman and Tversky through to contemporary work of Gigerenzer and most recently Sarasvathy. I hope we will see more of the work of Guercini and of EP in future volumes and encourage scholars working in the field to submit work.

Finally Nelson Oly Ndubisi and Khurram Iftikhar present their work on the comparison of small and medium sized firms in relation to the entrepreneurial – innovation – performance links. The authors state that many past studies have failed to explore the detail of difference between the two descriptors of “small” and “medium” entities in relation to performance – preferring to use agglomerated data that is neither firm nor size specific and they explore this difference in the context of Pakistan. This, then, is again a paper that explores below the surface of the known especially in the context of a developing economy. For me the conclusions of the paper – especially in reference to the development of entrepreneurial firms in Pakistan and the effect of culture on that development is particularly interesting.

As always I conclude my editorial introduction with a call to scholars of marketing and entrepreneurship, to researchers who are familiar with the concepts of both and to researchers new to work at the interface to submit conceptual, empirical and teaching case work for review and publication within JRME.

Jonathan H. Deacon