Despite entrepreneurial marketing being cited as one of the most important requirements for success of SMEs and startups, literature reveals few academic studies dealing with antecedents of entrepreneurial marketing. To contribute to the research gap, the purpose of thi More
Despite entrepreneurial marketing being cited as one of the most important requirements for success of SMEs and startups, literature reveals few academic studies dealing with antecedents of entrepreneurial marketing. To contribute to the research gap, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of entrepreneur’s characteristic on entrepreneurial marketing with considering the mediator role of network structure and communication. The study is descriptive-correlation and in terms of purpose is an applied research. The statistical population of this study is companies in Fars Science and Technology Park. Data are collected from 110 companies and are analyzed by using structural equation model (SEM). The results show that entrepreneur characteristics not positively direct influence entrepreneurial marketing. However, findings support the indirect effect of entrepreneur characteristics through mediating path of network structure and communication. In other words, if entrepreneur characteristics facilitate networks and communication, they will improve entrepreneurial marketing. SMEs and knowledge based companies that interested in improving entrepreneurial marketing practices should enhance individual characteristics that can be help developing network structure and communication. The study contributes to the existing research about the role the entrepreneur can have in the firm’s ability to develop entrepreneurial marketing activities. Also, these results could be used for understanding entrepreneurial marketing dynamics and structure based on the interactive relations between antecedents to improve entrepreneurial marketing. From a practical viewpoint, the study has found that entrepreneurial marketing is based on networking and communicating.
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