Exploring customer orientation as a marketing strategy of Mexican-American entrepreneurs

Abstract

Customer orientation is a major tenet of the entrepreneurial marketing concept, especially as the concept applies to small- and medium-sized minority businesses. The present exploratory research focuses on the customer orientation of Mexican-American entrepreneurs in the context of enclave theory, firm performance, and immigrant generation. A discernible percentage of the firms of the Mexican-American entrepreneurs surveyed followed a co-ethnic enclave customer orientation marketing strategy. However, the most common entrepreneurial marketing strategy observed was oriented toward a mixture of Hispanic and non-Hispanic customers. First generation Mexican-American entrepreneurs differed from second-and later-generation Mexican-American entrepreneurs in terms of the extent to which they employed co-ethnic customer and employee strategies as well as their self-assessed business skills. Even so, perceived business performance did not differ across customer orientation strategies and was relatively similar across immigrant generation and other personal and firm characteristics.