Marketing for small-to-medium enterprises 759
place and position within that market, means
that its marketing will invariably have a limited
impact upon the market. The old metaphors of
‘small fish in a large pond’ and ‘a drop in the
ocean’ serve to illustrate this significant limita-
tion. Of course, the consequence of such limited
impact upon the market is that SMEs must
adapt and focus any marketing practice to suit
the individual and unique characteristics of the
enterprise.
Characteristics of entrepreneurs/owners/managers
One of the major influences upon an SME’s
marketing practice is that of the lead entrepre-
neur/owner/manager. Indeed, it is probably
this individual’s influence which most charac-
terizes the style and nature of marketing
performed by an SME. There is a large
literature which is devoted to defining the
characteristics of entrepreneurs (Timmons,
1978; Meredith et al., 1982; Hofer and Bygrave,
1992). Typically they are perceived to be risk
takers and in being so, to be opportunistic and
visionary; innovative and creative; adaptive
and change oriented. Perhaps two further
characteristics are the most influential with
regards to marketing, the perception that entre-
preneurs are individualistic and highly focused
upon the enterprise’s well being.
Individualistic can of course mean a vari-
ety of things, however in the case of entrepre-
neurial behaviour it is often manifest as the
nature of an individual’s personality and how
this impacts upon his/her decision making.
The issue is not whether an individual is
aggressive, persuasive, assertive, placid, or
some other personality trait, it is in terms of
how the ‘individualistic’ characteristic impacts
upon marketing decision making. Bearing in
mind the SME limitations discussed above and
in consideration of how these can impact upon
‘individualistic’ decision making, such decision
making will invariably be simplistic because of
the limited expertise with regards to marketing.
It will be haphazard and unstructured because
it is reactive to events and intuitively individu-
alistic. All of these characteristics can lead to
apparently irrational decision making which
has a predominately short-term focus.
The highly focused nature of entrepreneur-
ial decision making is centred around the
enterprise’s well being. The entrepreneur is
continuously concerned with ensuring the sur-
vival and safety of the enterprise. While it can
be argued that SMEs are highly customer
oriented, the dominating preoccupation of the
entrepreneur is to maintain positive revenue
and cash flows towards profit. This assertion
would suggest that the lack of finance limita-
tion is dominant within the entrepreneur’s
thought process. Whatever, the highly focused
nature of entrepreneurs can sometimes mani-
fest itself as being obsessively self-centred
about the enterprise and its well being.
Acknowledging that the influence of the
entrepreneur has a huge significance upon the
character and style of SME decision making, it
is not to say that such influence is detrimental
to decision making effectiveness or business
success. Established entrepreneurial SMEs ben-
efit hugely from the influence of the lead
entrepreneur. Whilst the limitations of SMEs
may represent inherent weaknesses, the entre-
preneur will counteract these weaknesses by
bringing inherent strengths to the SME. These
strengths are centred around the entrepreneur-
ial network and his/her competencies for
doing business. Both these phenomena are
described and discussed later in this chapter.
In summary, we can say that most enter-
prises can be categorized as SME and that these
enterprises have distinctive characteristics
which differentiate them, not only from large
corporations but also from most other enter-
prises. It is recognized that SMEs have several
severe limitations represented by lack of
finance, lack of expertise and lack of market
impact. Within this limiting framework the
influence of the entrepreneur/owner/manager
is acknowledged, particularly in relation to the