Impact of Entrepreneurial Marketing on Performances of Small-scale Food Processing Firms in Kalutara District, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Entrepreneurial Marketing (EM) represents an unconventional marketing strategy tailored for small businesses with limited resources. This research aimed to empirically investigate the impact of various entrepreneurial marketing dimensions (such as proactiveness, opportunity focus, calculated risk-taking, innovativeness, customer intensity, value creation, and resource leveraging) on the overall performance (a collective measure of efficiency, growth, profit, and owners’ personal goals) of small-scale food processing firms in the Kalutara District, Sri Lanka. Moreover, the study also intended to assess the impact of human capital variables (gender, age, experience, and education level) on the dimensions of EM in these small businesses. The data were gathered through simple random sampling from 100 small businesses operational for more than a year. The findings indicate that opportunity focus, innovativeness, customer intensity, value creation, and resource leveraging positively affected overall small business performance, whereas proactiveness and calculated risk-taking had a negative influence. Moreover, all human capital variables exhibited a significant and positive association with different EM dimensions at varying levels of significance. Notably, owners' experience and education level were positively linked to dimensions such as innovativeness, customer intensity, and resource leveraging. The study recommends the application of entrepreneurial marketing by small businesses to enhance sustainability and performance. Furthermore, enhancing the education and experience of business owners is advised, as it fosters the adoption of EM at the organizational level, thereby contributing to improved performance.