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.

This paper builds on issues that surround the interface between entrepreneurial and digital marketing. In particular, it proposes a conceptual framework that relates digital market knowledge, market representation and decision making in the context of entrepreneurial SMEs. Thus, the paper contributes to the understanding of how entrepreneurs deal with digital market knowledge, and how such knowledge contributes to changes in representing markets and decision making. A growing awareness of the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation to marketing, and of marketing to successful entrepreneurship, has led to attempts to combine the two disciplines as “entrepreneurial marketing”. Scholars debate on the role of marketing in the entrepreneurial process (Schindehutte et al., 2009), and consider the marketing content of the entrepreneurial role (Guercini, 2012). It is argued that entrepreneurial marketing emphasizes the adaptation of marketing to forms that are appropriate to small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), even if entrepreneurial relates more in general to the marketing-entrepreneurship interface and the idea that marketing and entrepreneurship are fundamentally intertwined and necessary to the other. Marketing and the entrepreneurship take place in a context in which information technologies, data communication and data processing technologies are tools to manipulate, organize, transmit, and store information in digital form. More specifically, one of the major changes undergone by traditional marketing is determined by the emergence of digital marketing, which provides several tools and metrics, such as web analytics, for decision makers. However, it is yet not sufficiently clear how entrepreneurs deal with this type of knowledge emerging in a digital context, and how they use it in their decision making. The paper proposes a cross-case analysis based on in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs from SMEs in the fashion industry, a relevant empirical context that has experienced, before others, the implementation of digital marketing strategies. The analysis suggests the existence of different entrepreneurial profiles based on the approach adopted in dealing with digital market knowledge, as well as the existence of different types of relationships between entrepreneurs and digital market knowledge and alternative consequences in terms of decision-making processes.

This preliminary qualitative research investigates how stylistic innovation affects sales performance of small arts and crafts firms in business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets in Taiwan. Specifically this research examines entrepreneurial cognitive complexity, which is the cognitive structure of an entrepreneur on his or her social world, and its interplay with stylistic innovation, particularly the changes of design in appearance or symbolic meaning of products, and strategic decisions of five Taiwanese small arts and crafts firms. Applying cognitive mapping to determine the cognitive contents, structures and also their relations of the entrepreneurs in making decision related to stylistic innovation, this research examines how owners of small Taiwanese arts and crafts firms specifically seek, interpret and internalize information and knowledge on style and design in the new product development and innovation processes. Research results show that the domain specific cognitive complexity of the entrepreneur influences the selection of relevant and appropriate dimensions in stylistic innovation. Entrepreneurs’ strategic decision to target at the business-to-consumer (customer-oriented or designer-driven) or business-to-business (mainly designer-driven) markets and also the buyer-seller relationship will affect the seeking, interpretation and internalization of information and knowledge in the process of stylistic innovation. Respondents targeting at business-to-business markets tend to have a higher level of cognitive complexity, compared with those targeting at business-to-consumer markets. Research results tend to suggest that the higher level of cognitive complexity, the greater the sales turnover. Future research should determine the relationship between cognitive complexity and marketing performance.

Although many studies were conducted to understand the relationship between Export Marketing Strategies (EMS) and Export Marketing Performance (EMP) (Cavusgil & Zou 1994; Zou & Stan 1998) the majority involved medium-large size companies and took place on developed countries (Cunha, Rocha & Moraes, 2012). The role of managers on influencing marketing strategies (considering marketing mix decision about adaption or standardization) was not comprehensively analyzed. In order to fulfill some gaps Cunha (2012) developed a research to understand the empirical link on Micro and Small Enterprises (MSE) from emerging countries, but the role of entrepreneurs was not completely understood. In order to clarify this link, the reference model used was redesigned to explore Entrepreneurial Marketing (EM) and its influence on EMS and EMP. The relevance of MSE on emerging markets, especially in Brazil, is frequently explored considering number of existing companies and job generation in local market (according to SEBRAE & DIEESE (2013) MSE represent 99% of all Brazilian companies – 6.3 million firms, 52% of formal jobs and 40% of total wage paid in previous year). Together they represented 25% of GDP. Concerning internationalization and export activities, nineteen thousand companies generated US255 billion at foreign markets. More than 61% of them were MSE, but its sales participated with only 1% of this total (SEBRAE 2012). The EM construct has its foundations on studies developed by Hills and Hultman (2011) who tried to bring a consensus to definition, based on the mainstream concerns regarding this subject. They highlighted two complementary competences: planning (Filion 2000; Dornelas 2008; Nassif, Andreassi & Simões 2011); and intuition (Mitchell, Friga & Mitchell 2005; La Pira 2011; Nassif, Andreassi & Simões 2011). Both affect EMS and EMP differently. Our research was conduct with 173 MSE in order to examine the influence of entrepreneurial marketing on export marketing strategies and also the influence of EM and EMS on export performance. The results indicate that both entrepreneurs’ competences have a significant impact (Hair et al. 2009) on export marketing performance as anticipated in our hypothesis. Firstly, planning competence has a direct and positive effect on EMP because of a strategic variable related to perceived success of its international venture, and also because of an economic indicator related to exportation growing rate; it can be explained by the fact that a well and careful planning, allied to an high entrepreneurs’ commitment level may result on more success. The evidences are explained by strong training and support to intermediaries (distribution channel), that will help them better understanding and commercializing products - and through product strategy and packaging adaptation to the new market. Secondly, we also identified an unexpected effect caused by intuition – despite significance the influence was negative. Considering that we measured variables and perception in a three-year period, decisions based on intuition tend to be less result-oriented and carefully taken and results evaluation doesn’t have strong comparison bases. We observed an important effect of EM on export marketing strategy. (1) Product adaptation is strong and positively influenced by manager’s international competence (Douglas & Craig 1989; Cavusgil, Zou & Naidu1993). The entrepreneurs understand market rules, try to enhance competitiveness, respect local barriers and adapt offers diminishing risks. Investments reflect need or concern of matching market needs - i.e. label translation to local language. (2) Communication adaptation is positively influenced by entrepreneurs’ competence (high on planning and low on intuition), despite limited budget. (3) Price competitiveness is strong and positively influenced by entrepreneur planner. This expected effect corroborated the study of Cunha (2012), which identified the importance of adaptation of this marketing mix element to MSE, and also the relationship with pricing strategy as followers internationally (Solberg, Stöttinger & Yaprak 2006; Cunha & Moraes, 2011). (4) Considering distribution there is no influence of planner on support to intermediary. On the other hand, it is strong and negatively affected by intuitive entrepreneurs (our findings lead us to a conclusion that a lack of planning might jeopardize process of distribution adaptation). Our literature review showed that relationship and support to intermediaries is a key-success factor (Rosson & Ford 1982; Christensen, Rocha & Gertner 1987; Solberg, Stöttinger & Yaprak 2006). The negative result drove us to the importance of a well established relationship among exporters and intermediaries, as identified on the impact of export marketing performance by support to intermediaries –we expected to identify it on our research, but it seems that, if a company wants to succeed abroad it is mandatory to carefully manage this marketing element - one reason for our conclusions is supported by the Theory of Networks (Johanson & Vahlne 1990; Andersson, Forsgren & Holm 2002). All in all, our assumptions about the existent influence of entrepreneurial marketing on export marketing strategy and export marketing performance was supported in our study developed with MSE from emerging markets. We also observed the positive effect of EMS on EMP that fulfills our research objectives.