Exploring entrepreneurial marketing

This paper furthers the conceptual development of entrepreneurial marketing (EM) as theory. EM draws on the work of both marketing and entrepreneurship scholars and has evolved primarily from the marketing management and entrepreneurship literatures. Beginning with an overview of the different schools of thought from which the concept of EM has evolved, this paper attempts to outline and review the issues of EM that delineate it as a distinct area within the discipline of marketing. The discussion presents three potential locus of EM thought within the firm: vertical EM, horizontal EM, and EM as a temporal phenomenon. Finally, in adopting Hunt’s (2010) benchmarks that seek to verify the existence of a distinct body of theory, the paper concludes that EM is advancing towards theory construction.