Entrepreneurial Marketing, Environmental Uncertainty and Performance of Family Firms

Abstract

Businesses in general and family SMEs in specific are vulnerable to environmental uncertainty in underdeveloped countries. Stiff competitions, technological bursts and market turbulence appears as a catastrophe and a major cause for short life of many family SMEs. A few family SMEs still exist and survive in all these uncertain conditions. Various reasons been discussed in previous literature and had proved the importance of entrepreneurial marketing as one of the major sources of high performances. The marketing strategies opted by family SMEs having dimension of entrepreneurship, are not only self-beneficial but also the cause of new market trends. The primary purpose of this study is to consider the effect of opportunity vigilance, consumer centric innovation, value creation and risk management termed as entrepreneurial marketing and used as a fundamental approach for family SMEs to survive and grab high performances even under uncertain conditions. Results show that entrepreneurial marketing in family SMEs is positively associated with high performances even under uncertain environments. Previously uncertain environments were considered as one of the major cause for entrepreneurial marketing that does not qualify in our case. Family SMEs use entrepreneurial marketing as their vital tool for competitive markets to perform high irrespective of environmental conditions i.e. either favorable or unfavorable.