استراتژی های بازاریابی کارآفرینی بین المللی MNCs: سرهم بندی به عنوان تجربه توسط مدیران بازاریابی International entrepreneurial marketing strategies of MNCs: Bricolage as practiced by marketing managers

1. Introduction International marketing plays a central role as multinational corporations (MNCs) seek market opportunities and expand globally (Douglas & Craig, 2006). Katsikeas (2003) reviewed advances in international marketing theory and practice and noted that the literature of the time underemphasized the potential of synthesizing existing knowledge and integrating context-specific findings to resolve managerial problems and stimulate future research and business practices. Moreover, the same author later expressed a need to introduce new concepts addressing critical international marketing management issues (Katsikeas, 2014). For instance, how can MNCs remain proactive, innovative, and flexible in their international marketing and avoid it becoming reactive and ultimately stagnant? In light of introducing new marketing concepts, scholars have developed the notion of entrepreneurial marketing being “the proactive identification and exploitation of opportunities for acquiring and retaining profitable customers through innovative approaches to risk management, resource leveraging and value creation” (Morris, Schindehutte, & LaForge, 2002, p. 5). At the interface between marketing and entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial marketing has been a focus of research since the 1980s and seeks to understand the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (e.g., Bjerke & Hultman, 2002; Hills, 1987; Whalen & Akaka, 2016). In international marketing research, the theoretical perspectives of international entrepreneurial marketing have been devised based largely on studying marketing behavior in international new ventures or born global firms (Hallbäck & Gabrielsson, 2011,2013; Mort, Weerawardena, & Liesch, 2012). The assumptions underlying the literature are that large and established international firms such as MNCs use a traditional marketing approach, whereas smaller and younger international firms such as born globals adopt entrepreneurial marketing strategies (Bjerke & Hultman, 2002; Hallbäck & Gabrielsson, 2011; Kotler, 2003). The argument goes that conducting international marketing activities in smaller and younger entrepreneurial firms is especially difficult due to those firms’ limited resources and capabilities; and because their smallness, newness, and foreignness restrict the access to supplementary resources and networks (Hallbäck & Gabrielsson, 2013). Therefore it is important to apply entrepreneurial marketing to overcome these challenges (Hills, Hultman, & Miles, 2008). Moreover, there are often stronger internal obstacles to the entrepreneurial approach to marketing in large firms than in smaller entrepreneurial firms (Bjerke & Hultman, 2002; Carson, Cromie, McGowan, & Hill, 1995). That might be because large firms can become mired in formulated marketing and lack the creativity of marketers in start-up firms during the entrepreneurial stage (Kotler, 2003; Miles & Darroch, 2006).