BREAKING THE WALLS—BOUNDARY SPANNING ACTIVITY AND ITS INFLUENCE ON FIRM FORMATION
Mikael Samuelsson, Jönköping International Business School
Principal Topic
Despite the by know extensive marketing literature and the more limited, but growing, entrepreneurship literature we only have limited understanding about when different types of marketing activities have an influence on the venture exploitation process. In addition, our understanding is limited about how the amount of time and money spent on marketing activities influence the opportunity exploitation process across time. It is hypothesized that disequilibrium venture opportunities need to use more marketing both when it comes to different types of learning activities as well as a more extensive amount of marketing time and money. Equilibrium opportunities on the other hand, require an inflow of information about competition in order to build a competitive strategy. However, both time and money spent on marketing activities is hypothesized to have a positive impact on the opportunity exploitation process.
Method
Data come from the Swedish panel study of business start-ups. This is a random sample of Swedish nascent entrepreneurs who have been followed over time. Latent class analysis is used to distinguish between different types of venturing opportunities and latent growth modeling is applied in order to analyze how different marketing activities influence the venture exploitation process and subsequent performance.
Results and Implications
The results indicate that boundary spanning marketing activities has a positive impact on the venture exploitation process. This is in line with prior research on the nascent entrepreneurial process, which suggests that more tangible “venturing” activities are important for the development of the new venture. However, the results are not specific enough to allow normative claims of when and what types of marketing activities that are important at different stages of the venture exploitation process.
CONTACT: Mikael Samuelsson, Jönköping International Business School, P.O. Box 1026, SE-551 55 Jönköping Sweden; (T) +46-31-121751; (F) +46-36-161069; Mikael.Samuelsson@ihh.hj.se
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