Customer value based marketing activities in fast-growth firms

This study investigates customer-value based marketing activities in emerging/new fast-growth ventures. A contextual analysis of interview data identified seven customer value based marketing activities actively pursued synergistically by fast growth firms: employee branding; target marketing; marketing planning; marketing/market research; product differentiation via quality; relationship marketing and guerilla marketing. These elements form a complex web, in which each marketing activity complements the other. There are three main implications: all marketing activities are intertwined, in line with marketing theory and practice associated with large firms; most marketing activities undertaken are low cost; and establishing a winning reputation is an important objective. CEOs associate reputation with brand building via employees. This study investigates marketing activities in emerging/new fast-growth ventures. The main reason for undertaking this research concerns the dearth of marketing literature on fast-growth firms (FGFs). Despite the importance of marketing to FGFs, only one study (e.g., Hills & Hultman, 1999) has assessed the nature of marketing in these enterprises. This investigation proposes to fill this void. Research, in contrast, has concentrated mainly on large organizations (Vorhies & Morgan, 2005), and SMEs (Siu & Kirby, 1998). This line of enquiry has focused on specific marketing efforts, such as network marketing (O"Discroll, Carson, & Gilmore, 2000), marketing planning (Hill & McGowan, 1999), relationship marketing (Zontanos & Anderson, 2004) and wordof- mouth (WOM) marketing (Stokes & Lomax, 2002). Over ten years ago, Hills and LaForge (1992) called for investigations to incorporate firms with different characteristics to examine disparities in marketing relationships for new versus existing ventures, and small versus large firms, and to integrate marketing and entrepreneurship literatures. To fully understand SMEs and entrepreneurship, researchers need to take into consideration related variables (e.g., economies of scale, resource constraints) (Hills, 1999). We hold that different types of firms pursue diverse strategies depending on internal and external factors (Stokes, 2000). Recently, Tan and Smyrnios (2004) indicated that fast-growth SMEs possess learning, market, and entrepreneurial orientations: factors shown to be significant predictors of superior marketing capabilities and ultimately, firm performance. Their findings suggest that fast growth SMEs invest in maintaining sound relationships with stakeholders and developing superior products/services for positional advantages, the marketing capabilities of which contribute significantly to firm performance. While superior marketing capabilities are important drivers of performance, these capabilities also mediate relationships between business orientation and performance. Without such capabilities, market, entrepreneurial, and learning orientations provide little value to the attainment of desired performance objectives (Tan, 2005). Firms demonstrating strong market and entrepreneurial orientation tend to approach the marketing function differently to those less market and entrepreneurially oriented (Morris, Schindehutte, & LaForge, 2002). Tan (2005) identified that a marketing edge alone does not increase sales. In order to purchase products, customers need to regard products as possessing value, ultimately contributing to bottom line through increased sales (i.e., firm performance). Firms need to be cognizant of the key buying factors that customers value when they choose between competitors, and how customers rate competitors on key buying factors. Consistent with this view, we propose that firm marketing activities should be customer-value based. Accordingly, a principal question addressed by this research is, what specific customer-value based marketing activities do fast-growth SMEs practice