Abstract

Aim: The article aims to assess the impact of entrepreneurial marketing on the organizational culture and business growth in terms of UK.

Design/Method: The study has adopted quantitative methodology as per which, Stata was used considering it the primary tool for assessing the secondary data. Therefore, the GLS model was conducted for determining the effect. In addition, the data was collected from 100 entrepreneur marketers in SMEs.

Findings/Results: The findings of the study revealed that entrepreneurial marketing has a significant impact on the organizational culture of SMEs in the UK but entrepreneurial marketing does not have a significant impact on the business growth of SMEs in the UK

Keywords: entrepreneurial marketing, organizational culture, business growth, SMEs, innovation.

INTRODUCTION

Entrepreneurial marketing is not confined to business-to-consumer companies, however, even involves the business-to-business firms that tend to need the entrepreneurial marketing to create value through the networks as well as innovation (Retnaningsih et al., 2023). Moreover, the decision-makers may face challenges regarding adding value to the customers in the evolving models of business models (Azevedo & Almeida, 2021). For helping the small firm in scoping with the pressures to operate in fluctuating environmental conditions, an increasing body of knowledge that surrounds the merits of the owner-managers is there possesses the orientation of the entrepreneurial marketing. Such construct at times called the marketing or entrepreneurship interface, was even known to be an agile mindset (Mordi & Schoop, 2020). It pragmatically tends to leverage the resources, use the networks, and consider acceptable risks for proactively exploiting the opportunities for the purpose of the innovation as well as delivery of the value to key stakeholders that are the customers, workers, and platform associates.

The entrepreneurial marketing behaviors aim at yielding higher-levels of the performance of the company with the implementation of the market-oriented advantages as well as entrepreneurially-oriented approaches (Hamzah et al., 2023). Though, the preceding literature infers that the business growth from the entrepreneurial marketing may vary as per the pursuit of prospects across the contexts. For getting entrepreneurially oriented, the members of the organizational system have to interact with one another as well as the surroundings for learning from it. Moreover, they think cognitively that each member is affected through the public as well as the private world that forms organizational culture.

Moreover, the organizational culture is even dependent upon the policies as well as operating processes that already are set in the company (Inkizhinov et al., 2021). Furthermore, such policies as well as operational processes of the organization laid down already, have an effect on the thinking process as well as behavior of the leaders who ensure to have effective entrepreneurial marketing strategies which are convincing and can help in gaining higher business growth.

The organizational culture refers to the formulation of the dyadic link of the individuals as well as policies or the operational procedures, in which both, the individuals as well as organizational policies have an effect on one another (Trushkina et al., 2020). All these are basic traits for SMEs that can help in attaining value addition and speedy business prospects. Thus, it is important that the entrepreneurial marketing is engaging and effective so that a conducive organizational culture is formed in which, through collaborative efforts, long-term business growth is attained.

Thus, the aim of this study is to empirically analyze impact of the entrepreneurial marketing on the organizational culture and business growth in terms of UK. The key objectives in this regard are as follows,

• To conceptualize the terms entrepreneurial marketing, organizational culture, and business growth
• To assess the challenges pertaining to the entrepreneurial marketing that have an impact on the organizational culture and business growth in terms of UK.
• To recommend ways of having effective entrepreneurial marketing that have an impact on the organizational culture and business growth in terms of the UK.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Impact of entrepreneurial marketing on organizational culture

According to the study conducted by Khan& Ahmed (2019), there is a significant relationship between the organizational culture and entrepreneurial marketing. Culture in an organization tends to influence the tendency of employees to act whereas the leadership fundamentally plays a key role in forming the culture. Moreover, the behaviors as well as traits of leaders affect the entrepreneurial marketing orientation. It tends to pose a problem, since the entrepreneurial orientation which exhibits the procedure or decision making, pays heed to the actions instead of traits or behaviors (Khan& Ahmed, 2019). The entrepreneurial leadership style is associated with the leadership and even addresses certain actions regarding the entrepreneurs. Based on this background, the hypothesis of the study is.

H1: Entrepreneurial marketing has a significant impact on the organizational culture of SMEs in the UK.

Role of entrepreneurial marketing on business growth

Creative as well as entrepreneurial marketing has a significant role in the businesses (Hollensen & Saeidi, 2023). Moreover, it provides many benefits like the enhancement in terms of leadership, leveraging the greater customer knowledge, differentiating the brand of the company, value addition and deliverance to the customers, higher competitiveness, improved profitability, and customer loyalty. The factors that shape the entrepreneurial marketing lies in two groups that are internal and external. The internal factors refer to the culture, control system design, horizontal structure, responsiveness towards the results, issues in the financial investment, human resource management development, and commendation of the creative solutions, change acceptance, use of technology, emphasis on the entrepreneurship and giving priority to the communication and marketing competences (Hollensen & Saeidi, 2023). Whereas the external factors are diversity in the supply and demand, bargaining power of sellers and buyers, ability of substitution, competitive demands, technological change, fluctuations in the economic conditions, regulatory approaches, financial issues, and changes in the law and order (Allahdadi, 2018). Thus the implementation of the entrepreneurial marketing in SMEs can result in business growth orientation, focus on opportunity, consumer centrality, value addition, and creation. The entrepreneurial marketers tend to excel in the resourcefully leveraging the resources by the creative strategies. As per the higher level of uncertain conditions in the present market, the traditional marketing is quite insufficient in terms of boosting the performance of the company. Contrastingly, the entrepreneurial marketing possesses the potential of enhancing the business growth and performance. Considering the information shared above, the hypothesis is,

H2: Entrepreneurial marketing has a significant impact on the business growth of SMEs in the UK

Theoretical framework

Jay Barney has developed a resource based view of the company that refers to a strategic management theory (Barney et al., 2021). It is designed for explaining why some of the firms are able to perform in a better way than the others though if they have the same business environment. The resource-based view aims at explaining why the firms outdo well in comparison to others while looking at the resources of the company (Adekunle & Israel, 2022). It contrasts with previous perspectives, like Porter’s five forces, that pay heed on the external environment being the source of the threats as well as opportunities.

The key idea aligned with it is that the competitive advantage is attained from the effective usage of the tangible and intangible resources and even assets by the company. Moreover, the tangible assets are equipment or human resources, on the other hand, the intangible assets are things such as trade secrets as well as corporate reputation (Barney et al., 2021). This theory tends to have significant implications for the research on entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurial opportunities are expressed being the unique insight of entrepreneurs into the value of specific resources that well-known companies may not possess yet (Adam et al., 2022). Such a perspective has a greater emphasis to strive for exclusiveness instead of trying to be the greatest company covering all the metrics. When the entrepreneur possesses all the resources that are important for taking advantage of the opportunity, little need is there to organize, coordinate, and execute. Moreover, they pay heed to the situation for exploitation of the arbitrage opportunities that are created by the changes in the environment (Dionysus & Arifin, 2020). Contrastingly, greater entrepreneurial organization is required for taking advantage of an arbitrage prospect if the entrepreneur lacks key resources.

The resources that may be important for the entrepreneurs are particular information, strong leadership capabilities, and experience personified in the entrepreneurs (Davis & DeWitt, 2021). The theory is relatable to the study as it lays the foundation for the entrepreneurship capabilities for which resources mean a lot. If entrepreneurs have resources they can do effective marketing. This can ensure to develop of a conducive organizational culture that is engaging and motivated to work efficiently. The end result of it will be attaining higher business growth and competitive advantage in the market.

Conceptual framework

Following is the conceptual framework which is helpful for the readers to understand the relationship of the dependent and independent variables. On the left-hand side are the factors of entrepreneurial marketing which are expected to have a significant impact on the business growth and organizational culture of UK SMEs. The researcher has conducted different tests to prove this relationship which can either be positive or negative.

METHODOLOGY

In the present study, the positivism research approach is used. Basically, the positivism philosophy is helpful in giving a structure that can be used for collecting data and analyzing it (Tamminen & Poucher, 2020). Moreover, the use of the positivist approach is even helpful in the mitigation of many errors in the research outcomes. The positivist research approach is dependent upon the data collection and interpretation that helps to reach to strong conclusions (Park et al., 2020). Thus, the positivist philosophy assists in making sure that the structure of the study process in terms of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data is effective which can overall bring improvement in research outcome. In fact, it even increases the level of authenticity as well as validity of data.

In this study, the researcher has attempted the quantitative research design which is based on using statistical information to justify the findings of the study (Chali et al., 2022). Moreover, the rationale to use this method is that it lets the researcher gather numerical information from the individuals which can help in proving whether the impact of entrepreneurial marketing on the organizational culture and business growth in the UK is positive or negative. In this regard, the quantitative research design is helpful as it allows the readers to know how many people are in favour or disagree with this hypothesis (Hodge, 2020). Therefore, the quantitative research design is used for analysing the factors of entrepreneurial marketing which affect the organizational culture and business growth of SMEs in the UK.

The data was collected through the primary data collection method. According to Mazhar et al. (2021), the primary data collection method refers to the process of collecting the data by the use of surveys, interviews, focus group discussions, or observations. The researcher has attempted to use a survey questionnaire for the data collection which was made on the Likert scale, ranging from 1 as strongly agree to 5 as strongly disagree. There are nine questions in the questionnaire regarding which the participants were asked to give a rating only. 100 participants were recruited for the survey using a convenience sampling technique. Their data was then run through Stata software. Moreover, correlation and regression (random and fixed effect) were used in the analysis.

The reason for using such methods is that the correlation and regression analysis let the researcher find out the link between the dependent as well as independent variables as well as derive rational conclusions. Moreover, the use of Stata software significantly is helpful in the analysis as well as interpretation of the key results that are extracted from the large data sets. Thus, considering the justification of using Stata, the researcher employed it so that concrete results can be obtained through it.

Analysis

Descriptive Analysis

According to the study conducted by Cooksey (2020), the descriptive analysis is considered to be a significant part of the study since brief descriptions, and coefficients tend to result in summarizing the given data set. It helps develop the opportunities of representing the overall population that is tested or a particular sample of population. Furthermore, there is the significance of the descriptive analysis which can lead to developing a conclusive idea that the descriptive statistics are even more divided in measures of central tendency and variability (Setiawan & Sukoco, 2021). Thus, descriptive statistics refer to the particular methods that mainly are used for calculating, describing, and summarizing the gathered research data logically, meaningfully, and efficiently (Pandey et al., 2021). The descriptive statistics that are conducted in this study have delivered many assessed measures, from which, the mean and standard deviation, are taken into consideration significantly for developing the results.

Referring to the table above, it is found that the mean value of business growth is 0.00 whereas the standard deviation is 1.000. These values are same for all indicators that is entrepreneurial marketing and organizational culture. According to the study by Khan et al. (2020), it can be considered that entrepreneurial marketing is significantly linked with both factors because it ensures to have an innovative organizational culture which can significantly lead towards higher business growth and success attainment in the long run.

Correlation

Correlation analysis is the other method of the assessment that is found to be conducted in this study (Sürücü & Maslakçi, 2020). The method is used for the evaluation of the simplistic relationship that is observed between the variables that are a part of the research.

According to the table given above, it is found that business growth and organizational culture have a statistically significant link with entrepreneurial marketing. The above illustrated table shows that business growth has a Pearson correlation value of 0.235, entrepreneurial marketing has 0.118 and organizational culture has 1.000. As a matter of fact, business growth is found to have a weak relationship with the entrepreneurial marketing, whereas organizational culture has a higher and significant relationship. It can be triangulated through the findings of the study by Canning et al. (2020) that a motivating organizational culture is helpful for the employees in building confidence and adapting to the entrepreneurial mindset. In fact, an organizational culture that has diversified employees, perspectives, ideas as well as experiences has a strong contribution to the entrepreneurial culture.

Path coefficients

A path coefficient shows a direct impact of a variable which is assumed as cause on the another variable presumed as an effect (Cain, 2021). Moreover, path coefficients are actually standardized as they are projected from the correlations (whereas a path regression coefficient is considered to bew unstandardized).

The table above is showing that the correlation is there between the variables that is business growth and entrepreneurial marketing as p value is 0.086. Whereas, organsiational culture and entrepreneurial marketing has a p-value of 0.47. It is interpreted that an increase in entrepreneurial marketing is bound to have a significant impact on the organizational culture.

Fixed and random effect

Referring to the table above, the business growth is found to have 4.135 significance whereas the organisational culture has 0.052. The fixed and random effect is checked if the variables are found to be statistically significant. This is fixed effect model that is proven in this table.

Outer loadings

The relationship between the entrepreneurial marketing is observed with its variables i.e. EM1, EM2 and EM3 along with the latent construct. It shows that an increase in the outer loading signifies a stronger relationship. It is observed with EM1 in which the outer loading is observed to be 1.000.  In the same way, business growth is even found to have a stronger relationship owed to the outer loading and it is also perceived to have a higher representation. In the case of organizational culture, 1.000 outer loading shows that a significant amount of the outer loading is there along with a stronger relationship with the latent constructs.

R square

The table given above is depicting that the value of R square is found to be 0.634. It means that the model is able to predict 63.4 % of other variables. Moreover, while adding further variables, the predictability of the model is expected to increase. 

Reliability

Reliability analysis refers to a consistency measure (Sürücü & Maslakçi, 2020). Moreover, it is a tool which is helpful in evaluating particular construct stability. Whereas on the other hand, Cronbach’s alpha is used to assess the reliability of the questionnaire. Below are the values of reliability of business growth, entrepreneurial marketing and organizational culture.

Referring to the table above, it is found that the value of CronBach alpha for business growth is 0.641.  Entrepreneurial marketing has 0.467 whereas organizational culture has 0.846. It shows that organizational culture tends to have a higher internal consistency, since it is higher than 0.7.  According to the study conducted by Taber (2018), the CronBach alpha value which is above 0.7 is considered to have good internal consistency.

Discussion and Hypothesis Assessment Summary

Referring to the above given hypothesis, it is found that H1 is accepted whereas H2 is rejected. Entrepreneurial marketing has a significant impact on the organisational culture of SMEs in the UK. This is because entrepreneurial marketing aims at focusing to see the opportunities while developing an understanding about the significance to use the present resources from the internal or external and taking advantage of the opportunities for value creation (Alqahtani & Uslay, 2020). Thus, when entrepreneurs do this, they also develop an organisational culture that is motivational for bringing innovation and taking risks. In fact, the workers are encouraged for brainstorming the new ideas or even products that can be marketed. However, entrepreneurial marketing does not have a significant impact on the business growth of SMEs in the UK. It can be supported through the argument that despite of having effective entrepreneurial marketing strategies, SMEs fail to grow due to poor resource allocation and utilization (Adel et al., 2020). This is just one school of thought. There can be many others that might support or oppose this hypothesis however, considering the views of the participants, it is proven that there is a weak correlation of entrepreneurial marketing with the business growth.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The study aimed at assessing the impact of entrepreneurial marketing on the organizational culture and business growth in terms of UK. In this regard, a quantitative research technique was employed. The researcher has sampled 100 participants to gather insights on this topic of the study. Moreover, through the survey questionnaire, the responses were gathered which proved that entrepreneurial marketing has a significant impact on the organisational culture of SMEs in the UK. However the other hypothesis was rejected, that was entrepreneurial marketing has a significant impact on the business growth of SMEs in the UK. The findings were triangulated through the preceding studies which helped to justify that if entrepreneurs have resources they can do effective marketing. This can ensure to develop a conducive organizational culture that is engaging and motivated to work efficiently. Considering the findings of the study, it is suggested to SMEs to pay heed on the innovative entrepreneurial marketing strategies that can managed in the allotted resources (Karami et al., 2023). Moreover, a diversified organizational culture must be developed so that entrepreneurs belonging to different backgrounds, do not feel discomfort in working in teams. In addition, financial growth must be the focus of the entrepreneurial marketing strategies as per which they have to invest in more to get more productive results.

Future implications

The study can work as a guide for the readers who intend to join the field of entrepreneurs. If they want to have a startup or run an SME, it is needed to consider the factors that can lead to successful attainment. In the future, the study can also be directed towards adding qualitative data so that extensive information is attained on the topic of the study. In addition, it would rather be an effective approach to mold the topic and make it confined to a single SME, to know the views of the entrepreneurs there. Lastly, the variables can be increased to know more about their relationship with the entrepreneurship marketing.

Limitations of the study

As only quantitative findings are taken into consideration, there is a lack of quality of data which could have helped in justifying the significant aspects of the study. Moreover, this research had limited time thus the researcher faced the burden and pressure of data collection which was delayed due to various reasons such as not willingness of the participants to fill out the form, etc. Furthermore, the data needed to be triangulated which was a major challenge as preceding research was not conducted on this topic or had different variables which did not coincide with this study.

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Questionnaire

Gender

• Male
• Female

Age

• 25-30
• 31-35
• 36-40
• 40 onwards

Working experience

• 2 years
• 3 years
• Above 5 years