Marketing of innovation: The case of a Welsh SME in the ICT sector

This study investigates the marketing of software products and services in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Due to the nature of software products' intangibility and the high failure rate of small high tech organisations, the study incorporates the concept of Relationship Marketing (RM) and Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). These concepts are especially pertinent to organisations within highly competitive and innovative markets as they attempt to build market share by delivering fast, high quality and innovative solutions. The methodology combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative methods include two case studies of SMEs in the Welsh software industry and in-depth interviews with their customers and employees. The researcher was also able to employ participant observation of the marketing activities and development of relationships within the SMEs. Content analysis and text mining analysis was conducted on the in-depth interviews to establish customer perceptions of the dyadic relationships and customers' general expectations of software organisations. Adaptive Conjoint Analysis (ACA) was subsequently employed as a quantitative method to investigate the trade-offs organisations make when making software purchase decisions. The findings indicate that development of long-term relationships with customers is valuable within the software industry, and such long lasting relationship has to have roots in important attributes especially `Software Quality', 'Understanding of customer requirements' and `Professionalism' of the software supplier. The importance of service quality as well as product quality is evident in the ACA findings and the constructs are presented in a model, which can be used by high tech SMEs as a guide to managing customer expectations and improving their Relationship Marketing activities. Important facets of high tech marketing are also included in the model as critical success factors for SMEs in the software industry. These factors include forming alliances, and developing Integrated Marketing Communications as a tool supporting RM