Bamboo based industries in Manipur and entrepreneurship marketing

Dr N Irabanta Singh and Aeroshil Nameirakpam

Introduction 

Entrepreneurial marketing is a new concept . It needs both entrepreneurial skills as we as marketing skills for success of any venture. This concept needs a marketer to be innovative, risk taking and proactive in performing managerial responsibility. Entrepreneurial Marketing is gaining significance and popularity because of inadequacies in conventional marketing to address the needs of the Organization operating in competitive landscape. In this article , the writers will try to Identify the advantages of an entrepreneurial perspective on marketing that will be drawn from the work on corporate Entrepreneurship , innovation and new product development, creative leadership and change management. 

 

The Term “Entrepreneurial Marketing” is proposed as an integrative concept for information intensity and ongoing change in the environment context within which firms operate with regard to the market place. The firm seeks to lead customers as opposed to reacting to and follow them, and attention is devoted to the creation of new markets rather than better serving existing markets. 

 

Most important marketing role within the firm is designed around six key dimensions :- 

The Term “Customer Intensity” can be used to capture a sense of conviction , passion , zeal , enthusiasm and belief in where marketing is attempting to take the firm and the way in which it plans to get there. Beyond bringing technical competence to the marketing task, entrepreneurial markers bring intensity , they reinforce the need for all employee to identify at a very fundamental level with the firm’s products and brands and what they stand for and ultimately win the firm’s customer value proposition. 

 

Marketing plays an integral part in sustainable innovation, with roles ranging from opportunity identification and concept generation to technical support and creative augmentation of the firm’s resource base to support innovation. Within marketing operations, process innovation becomes a cornerstone. Thus, managers continually champion new approaches to segmentation, pricing, use of the brand, packaging, customer relationship management, customer credit, logistics, customer communication, and service levels, among other operational activities

 

Strategic flexibility involves a willingness to continuously rethink and adjust be firm’s strategies, action plans, and resource allocations, as well as to company structure, culture, and managerial systems. Flexibility demands seen insights into the organization’s resources, capabilities and competences. 

 

The marketing function contributes to the firms strategic flexibility and hence its ability to adapt. Flexibility can be enhanced through: adroit approaches to human capital and resource leveraging; strategic partnerships and alliances combined with a global market presence; limited levels of commitment to particular products, markets and technologies; effective incorporation of new and emerging technologies (i.e. technologies that enable the firm to quickly recognize changing market needs or conditions, customize products, and severs different markets in different ways); and intelligence gathering and process activities that facilitate organizational learning

 

Risk taking involves a willingness to pursue opportunities that have a reason able chance of producing losses or significant performance discrepancies. The emphasis is not on high or completely uncontrollable but instead on risks that are moderate and calculated. Entrepreneurial marketing does not entail reckless decision making but rather, a reasonable awareness of the risks involved (e.g. financial, technical market related and personal and an attempt to manage such risk factors. These risks are reflected in the various resource allocation decisions made by an organization, as well as in the choice of products, services and markets to be emphasized

 

The environment is defined as an opportunity horizon, while acknowledging areas where the firms is more dependent on various external part or vulnerable to external phenomena, marketing efforts are proactively directed towards affecting change in the environment. More specifically, the marketer attempts to redefine elements of the external environment in ways that reduce environmental uncertainly, lessen the firm’s dependency and vulnerability and modify the task environment in which the firm operators. In essence, the marketer is enhancing the firm’s level of control over its own destiny.

 

A topology of environmental management strategies consisting of three general categories (independent, cooperative and strategic maneuvering) and 16 individual strategies. Most of these clearly fall within marketing’s domain, white others are supported in their implementation by marketing activities (Zeithaml and Zeithaml, 1984).

 

The concept of resource leveraging has a number of aspects: 

• Stretching resources much farther than others have not in the post;

• Getting uses out of resources that others are unable to realize; 

• Using other peoples (or firm’s) resources to accomplish one’s own purpose; 

• Complementing one resource with another to create higher combined value; 

• Using certain resources to obtain other resources, 

Leveraging is not something one simply decides to do. It is a creative rather than mechanical process. Marketing develop a capacity for resource leveraging. Some are more creative, other less so.

 

When considered collectively, these six dimensions produce a type of marketing that different significantly from conventional marketing practice. Underlying these differences are, the three entrepreneurial dimensions of innovativeness, risk taking and proactiveness. EM is fundamentally an opportunity driven and opportunity seeding way of thinking and acting. Moreover, entrepreneurial behavior lies at the core of this conceptualization of marketing, and these attributes are applied to the full range of marketing activities, from market research and segmentation to be management of the marketing mix.

 

This is not to suggest that science, established theory, systematic processes, and sophisticated sights are not vital aspects of EM. These elements must play an instrumental role if marketing is to have sustainable impact. The problem is that the extent body of theory and many of the frameworks and tools of marketing do not, for the most part, accommodate or facilitate our understanding of entrepreneurial activity.

 

Six key marketing roles viz. Customer intensity, sustainable innovation, strategic flexibility, calculated risk taking, environmental proactiveness, and resource leveraging are regarded most important in concept of entrepreneurial marketing. In the case of customer intensity, Homeland and prahalad (1994) note “Getting to the future first is more a function of resource fullness than resources….” 

 

A broads shared dream a truly seductive view of tomorrow’s opportunity”. Sustained innovation involves the ability at an organizational level to maintain a flow of internally and externally moderated new ideas that are translatable into new products, services, processes, technology applications and for markets (Runser-Spanjol, 2001). Flexibility demands keen insights into the organization’s resources, capabilities and competencies. (Hitta and Reed, 2000). 

 

For calculated risk-taking Hamel and Prahalad (1992) use a basketball analogy in suggesting that successful hits times the number of times the firm comes to bat. For environmental proactiveness, particular environmental management approaches can be linked to the current competitive position of the firms and the stages of the product life cycle (Zeithaml and Zeithaml, 1984).

 

Of all the types of leveraging approaches mentioned earlier. Perhaps the most critical one concerns the ability to use other people’s resources to accomplish the marketer’s purpose. When considered collectively, six dimensions mentioned above produce a type of marketing that differs significantly from conventional marketing practice. 

 

Marketing becomes responsible and accountable for passion, innovations risk management, resource leveraging, enhanced organizational flexibility and adaptability, including environmental proactiveness. Moreover, entrepreneurial marketing becomes a higher order conceptualization that captures both entrepreneurship in marketing and marketing in entrepreneurship. In this context, bamboo-based industries by utilizing available resources can be applied for generating income through entrepreneurial marketing. Thus, it is concluded result of entrepreneurship and marketing. These characteristics are responsible for success in businesses in the entire world because world is now a global village. 

 

The First Writer is Retd. Professor (HAG) , Life Sciences, Manipur University and co-founder of Nibiaa Consultancy Pvt.Ltd and the second writer is Managing Director and Co-Founder of Nibiaa Consultancy Pvt.Ltd. Singjamei, Imphal – 795 008, Manipur