Determining contributions of entrepreneurial marketing to the growth of small firms in Meru town, Kenya

1982, emerged a paradigm shift from the old marketing approach to Entrepreneurial Marketing practice that focused on attracting and retaining profitable customers using creative and unsophisticated tactics with minimal resources. As a recent strategy for small firms, Entrepreneurial Marketing (EM) is characterized by pro-activeness; focus on opportunity, risk taking, innovativeness, customer intensity, resource leveraging and value creation. The extent to which innovativeness, risk taking and pro-activeness in marketing has been adopted by small firms in Meru Kenya to achieve higher returns on investment, growth in sales and satisfy customers is the focus of this study. The study is grounded on entrepreneurial marketing, theory. Explanatory research design was adopted to explain the direction and extent to which entrepreneurial marketing improved performance of small firms. Data was collected from 112 small firms sampled from Meru town and was analysed using descriptive and inferential techniques. The findings of the study revealed that innovative marketing practices had inverse effect (beta = -0.153). Risk taking and pro-activeness had a positive effect on the firms’ performance. However, none of the three dimensions of entrepreneurial marketing significantly affected the growth of the small enterprises. The study suggests that owners of small enterprises be trained in entrepreneurial marketing. Secondly the innovative marketing strategies should be made compatible with the customers’ values and beliefs. Further studies in entrepreneurial marketing should be done on large firms across the country. Also, other studies should focus on opportunity customer intensity, resource leveraging and value creation and their influence on small enterprise growth