Impact of customer and entrepreneuroriented marketing on business performance: an empirical evidence of SMEs in Russia

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the impact of marketing activities on the successful development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It identifies and analyzes a set of customeroriented business processes and entrepreneurial marketing competencies designed to profit SMEs. Based on the literature review, the concept of a “marketing model” has been defined as a customer-oriented value system, a set of marketing competences, and marketing business processes. It is hypothesized that not only the customer and entrepreneurial orientations influence SME marketing models, but also basic and dynamic marketing competences and marketing business processes. External and internal factors that influence the development of marketing models are identified, as well as specific characteristics of SME marketing models and the logic of their development. Interview analysis and data content analysis were used to process qualitative data. This study comprises quantitative methods (via survey), combined with further data processing by regression, cluster analysis (IBN SPSS), SEM (IBN SPSS Amos) and the logistic regression methods (logit model). The focus of this research is to analyze the development patterns and specifics of SME marketing modeling to ensure effectiveness and growth of small business. The results of this research demonstrate improvement in the diagnosis and performance evaluation of SMEs and can be utilized by practicing entrepreneurs, SME business owners, and the academic community.