Entrepreneurial Marketing Capabilities: A Comparative Study of Male and Female Small and Medium Business Owners

Abstract

Business challenges in the digital marketing era are getting tougher because competitors don't only come from within the country, but also come from various countries around the world. For this reason, an entrepreneur needs to have a proactive attitude, be innovative, and dare to take risks to improve his business performance. The purpose of this study is to (a) explore entrepreneurial marketing capabilities in female and male entrepreneurs in East Java. (b) Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of male and female entrepreneurs in terms of Proactiveness, Calculated Risk-taking, Innovativeness, Opportunity Focus, Resource Leveraging, Customer Intensity, Value Creation, and Legitimacy. (c) developing an effective entrepreneurial marketing model for MSMEs managed by women and men. This type of research is qualitative phenomenology. The research location is in Greater Malang which consists of Malang city, Malang district and Batu city. The research subjects were 12 SMEs engaged in the food and beverage sector, consisting of 6 SMEs managed by women and 6 SMEs managed by men. The research instruments were interviews, observations and documentation. To increase the level of data accuracy, triangulation is carried out, both method triangulation and source triangulation. While the analysis was carried out using the Miles formula, with stages a) data collection b) data display c) data condensation and d) conclusion drawing/verifying. The output of this research is publication in international journals, and intellectual property rights. The results showed that in implementing entrepreneurial marketing (Entrepreneurial Marketing), male entrepreneurial competencies were more dominant in terms of risk taking, encouraging purchase intentions, creative value and legality. Meanwhile, female entrepreneurs have more dominant competencies in terms of being proactive, innovative, focusing on opportunities and seeking sources of funds. It is recommended that women MSMEs are more suitable for managing food and beverage businesses on a pioneering scale, while men are more suitable for managing businesses that are already experiencing growth.