Market orientation and strategic decisions on immigrant and ethnic small firms

Abstract

Entrepreneurial orientation in small ethnic firms is embedded in a strong sociocultural environment, which influences their market orientation. For this reason, entrepreneurs choose between either focusing their businesses on their ethnic communities or attracting mainstream customers from outside their ethnic enclave. The article aims to contribute to the knowledge of ethnic and immigrant firms by taking a detailed look at their marketing orientation and strategic decisions. To perform this study, the researchers used a multi-method qualitative data collection, including the analysis of different entrepreneur cases, within several Brazilian communities overseas, which illustrate four different marketing orientations of ethnic entrepreneurs: (i) “focus on the ethnic niche market,” (ii) “focus on specific interests,” (iii) “focus on exotic products for the mainstream customer,” and (iv) “focus on highly competitive markets.” Authors draw a 2x2 matrix as an output of the research.