Emerging markets are experiencing immense institutional transformations, which present substantial opportunities and challenges for entrepreneurial firms attempting to grow their businesses. The main challenges arise from the fact that emerging markets are less productive, and uncertainty and risk are high due to less transparency. Consequently, dissimilar to their counterparts in developed markets, entrepreneurial firms in developing economies are characterised by limited internationalisation knowledge and process, which are pivotal for developing export marketing strategy effectively.

Research in entrepreneurial marketing (EM) has put considerable effort into identifying various factors associated with entrepreneurial success, including skills and competences of prospective entrepreneurs. At the same time, little consensus exists regarding the relative importance of particular marketing skills. Moreover, the literature to date does not outline any essential marketing-related competencies needed for nascent entrepreneurs. Our study looks to identify specific marketing competencies relevant to entrepreneurial context. A three-stage mixed-methodology approach to data collection is deployed. Qualitative documentary analysis and exploratory interviews provide preliminary findings and guide the design of a subsequent quantitative survey of UK entrepreneurs, resulting in insights into the most beneficial marketing competencies for entrepreneurship. Further, these insights are used to equip educators with improved practice of developing marketing practice for future entrepreneurs. This research is expected to advance the understanding of nascent entrepreneurship research, practice and pedagogy within EM field.

Building on insights from institutional theory and dynamic capabilities, this study investigates the relationships of cross-functional capabilities with export marketing strategy implementation and, ultimately, its influence on export performance. This study utilizes multiple-informant and time-lagged primary data from 218 exporting firms in Nigeria to contribute to an understanding of how export marketing capabilities can be implemented to drive export performance. The results suggest contrasting moderating effects of psychic distance and competitive intensity on the cross-functional capabilities to export marketing strategy implementation relationship. This research contributes to the international business and marketing literature by advancing the knowledge on marketing capabilities and strategy implementation, and highlights managerial implications for international business.

Introduction and Rationale Research interest in the global and strategic marketing field has been stimulated significantly over the past two decades by the increasing globalization of economic systems and accelerating pace of competition worldwide. The establishment and development of global business operations involves international marketing strategy decisions that can bring substantial economic benefits for both national economies and individual companies. A large number of conceptual propositions and empirical works have examined how firms can derive sustainable competitive advantage from their global and strategic marketing activities and cross-border collaborations. The Special Session aims to uncover and debate on some important empirical, methodological, and theoretical research challenges within the broad domain of global marketing and strategy. Further, it sets to highlight emerging trends and concepts in the field to critically evaluate their potential impact on existing theory development and management practice. Emphasis will be placed on comparing contributions from leading international scholars to stimulate research synergy and collaboration. Specifically, the Special Session will provide a strong base for establishing, maintaining, and developing a dialogue among marketing academics who have interests in the global marketing and strategy phenomena. All panel members specialize in the topic and have published extensively in well-recognized academic journals. All contributors hold a highly international profile and are affiliated to different research institutions. The proposed topic cover important and timely issues in global and strategic marketing which are outlined below.

Building on insights from motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) theory, we explore the antecedents and conditions through which entrepreneurs within small and medium enterprises (SMEs) adopt corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Seeing how current research is almost exclusively dominated by investigating the activities of multinational or large organizations, we shift the attention to the social responsibility initiatives of the individual entrepreneur, seen as a moral, social and environmental champion. This study contributes to marketing and international business literature by advancing knowledge of the determinants of responsible entrepreneurship across different research settings. We highlight the importance of personal entrepreneurial values and moral ideologies and their impact on CSR engagement. From this perspective, we first applied an exploratory/qualitative research method to focus on the CSR initiatives of entrepreneurs in the UK by conducting series of interviews to identify various individual, firm and external level determinants that influence the implementation of responsible entrepreneurship practices. Second, we completed a large scale survey among 224 UK entrepreneurs. Preliminary results demonstrate that others-centered values, entrepreneurial alertness, competence, availability of resources and stakeholders influence, are important antecedents of both intentional and actual engagement in CSR practices, which in turn leads to improved performance.

The present study focuses on the construct of entrepreneurial alertness, investigating the external antecedents of the construct, responding to the call for more research pledged by Tang, Kacmar, and Busenitz (2012). Namely, we examine how receiving feedback, awards and collaboration offers in relation to an individual’s hobby activity influences the development of entrepreneurial alertness dimensions. Additionally, we make a contribution by testing the effect of these external factors in a non-entrepreneurial context of homebrewing communities, that is individuals producing beer at home as a hobby. In line with other form of craft activities, this context has demonstrated a high potential for business start-up development due to the increasing number of new small brewing businesses in North America run by entrepreneurs that were previously homebrewers (Carroll & Swaminathan, 2000). We test our tenets within the complexity theory, where configurations of antecedents are examined in order to gain deeper understanding of the possible outcome (Woodside, 2014), using 213 completed questionnaires. We apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA, Ragin 2000; 2008) to achieve a holistic overview of the examined interrelationships (Ordanini, Parasuraman & Rubera, 2015). We find that high feedback is a sufficient condition for high scanning and search, association and connection, as well as evaluation and judgement activities of entrepreneurial alertness. Without feedback, people at the hobby stage engage in their leisure activities solely because they like it. However, receiving feedback in relation to their hobby outcomes provides an opportunity for individuals to develop and experience additional motivations beyond enjoyment, where they understand that the hobby could be commercialized and bring monetary rewards. Moreover, we find that an individual receiving low amount of awards but high amount of collaboration offers may also have high entrepreneurial alertness. Since individuals receive rewards related to the excellent performance in their leisure activity, it may not provide any cue for a potential transformation into a business. However, the more collaboration offers people receive, the more likely they get involved in scanning and search, association and connection, and evaluation and judgement activities of entrepreneurial alertness. Therefore, they are likely to conduct additional search, connect bits of available information and evaluate this business opportunity (Gaglio & Winter, 2009). The findings of this study could help entrepreneurs reflect on their decisions and behaviours during the business start-up planning process, and measure their entrepreneurial alertness and the extent of readiness to engage in business venturing.