Application of SME Marketing Model within Higher Education Entrepreneurial Teams

This work-in-progress paper draws upon the Contextual Marketing (CM) theory (Carson and Gilmore, 2000; Deacon and Harris, 2011) and aims to explore the entrepreneurial marketing skills of student entrepreneurs who work and study within the entrepreneurial teams at Northumbria university in the UK. Little is known about how marketing is learnt and implemented in the entrepreneurial practices by entrepreneurs studying for a business degree. This lack of knowledge is also present in the entrepreneurial team context, which despite the growing attention remains unexplored in relation to the development and application of marketing skills in business venturing by teams. In order to fill this gap, this study adopts the SME marketing model developed by Carson & Gilmore (2000) and looks into whether entrepreneurial students apply the elements of contextual SME marketing namely Standard Textbook Marketing Frameworks, Competency Marketing, Networking Marketing and Innovative Marketing when create and develop new start-ups in teams. The data gathered in the form of observed and recorded workshops reveal the tendency among the entrepreneurial student teams to network extensively in order to expand their social capital for business purposes but cautiously apply other elements of SME marketing in their practices. This suggests that entrepreneurial students could focus more on building entrepreneurial marketing competence through integration of theoretical knowledge and activities that foster innovative and creative skills needed for entrepreneurial venturing. A synthetizing approach to teaching and learning entrepreneurship can bring greater results to both parties within enterprise education with students being better prepared to compete in the job market (Brown, 2017) and enterprise education developers contributing to the economy by supporting the creation of new start-ups and student self-employment (Rae, 2017). This work-in-progress paper expands the theory of CM with the empirical findings derived from the contextual, educational and teampreneurial settings. It will shed light on whether marketing processes exercised within the entrepreneurial teams differ from the processes applied in the usual SME settings.