766 The Marketing Book
feasibility analysis incorporating external and
internal analysis over a wide range of issues.
The textbook descriptions of this aspect of the
process will outline a comprehensive list of
aspects for consideration in a ‘complete’ market
analysis, thus external issues may be outlined
as covering market environment; marketing
information; market knowledge; market seg-
mentation; market opportunities; competition,
and so on. Similarly, internal issues may be
outlined as covering internal environment;
marketing variables; marketing organization;
marketing systems; marketing strategies and
plans, and so on. The entrepreneurial adapta-
tion of this is simply an intuitive consideration
of those issues concerned with all/any aspect
outside of the firm’s influence and control
(external) and those issues that are within the
firm’s control (internal). This is the market
feasibility analysis process in practice, but it
will bear no relationship, either conceptually or
descriptively, with any textbook description.
Thus, SMEs will pragmatically adapt any
marketing theory to make it relevant to the way
they do business. Whether this looks like or
meets the criteria of good textbook marketing
has no consideration with an entrepreneur, it is
the intuitive performance in practice which is
the prime consideration.
Marketing in ‘context’
It has been argued above that in practice any
marketing in SMEs is intuitively performed
and that this marketing practice will be set in
the situation specific of the firm (Figure 29.1).
Some indication of how this marketing is
determined is given in relation to incorporat-
ing a number of factors of influence which
must be taken into account when determining
what or how to do marketing in SMEs. Some
mention was made to the ‘context’ of market-
ing and how certain marketing characteristics
will impact upon the type and style of market-
ing that will be carried out by an SME. Taking
this logic a little further it is possible to
construct a ‘marketing in context picture’ for
any SME by taking account of a number of
factors of significance.
While marketing activity and environment
can be and are complex, it is still possible to
identify the essential key factors which deter-
mine and dictate the type and style of market-
ing that can and should be performed. Firstly,
consider the key marketing characteristics that
stem from the relevant domains of marketing.
There may be many but they are easily clus-
tered within a common grouping, for example,
services marketing will generate its own list of
services characteristics which belong in some
form or other to any services context. Similar
lists of characteristics can be generated for any
domain of marketing. Any student or practi-
tioner of marketing will be able to generate
such lists of characteristics simply by thinking
of the definitional context of the groupings. So
as for services, consumer marketing has dis-
tinctive characteristics; similarly industrial
marketing; and so on. Of course, since we are
concerned with SME marketing, then the inher-
ent characteristics of SMEs can be generated. In
most marketing in context situations there will
be two or three key groupings of characteristics
which impact upon the marketing activity
performed. Not all characteristics will impact
upon the marketing in the same way or with
the same degree of influence. Neither should
the groupings be considered in isolation, in fact
it is how they interact together that determines
the significance of influence. By visually over-
lapping the identified groupings it is possible
to determine with some degree of accuracy the
common characteristics and their linkages
between groupings and to evaluate the most
significant; these therefore, represent the inher-
entfeaturesandfactorsof influence. Figure 29.2
offers a simple illustration of this process. Each
circle may represent known characteristics
belonging to a given domain of marketing. By
considering a number of these domains of
marketing together, rather than in isolation, it is
possible to arrive at those characteristics which
are common and which therefore, are most
significant in a given marketing context.