Empirical Research on the Marketing Contribution for the Growth of Start-up Firms

我们的实证研究证实了市场营销对创业公司的成长有一定的促进作用。我们的发现如下两点。首先，虽然营销对增长做出了贡献，但这种贡献对规模的增长不利，而是对创新有利。追求企业规模是传统小企业研究的主题，即产业二元论。行业二元论批评了一个国家内公司的不均衡发展。这项研究坚持要改变一项促进小企业发展的规定。当研究人员强调市场营销有助于增长时，他/她隐含地假设小企业的最终目的是规模的增长。正如许多研究指出的那样，大型公司往往倾向于官僚主义。这种趋势有时迫使个人行为正式和严格。因此，这种组织产生的创新少于具有企业家精神的组织。第二，这种创新依赖于商业交易网络之间的信任结构氛围。正如许多研究表明的那样，由于创新是无法控制的，因此促进创新往往需要许多尝试和错误的过程。此过程在信任条件下可能成功。因为，在信托条件下，参与此次交易的公司知道没有成功的保证。即使成功的可能性如此之低，一个成员还是愿意赌它的表现。我们把这种行为称为信任。创新常常以失败告终，但一家支持创新者的公司却不断尝试。营销技巧可以看作是这种过程。在小企业成长研究中，市场营销应该是一个网络化的过程。

We have empirically confirmed that the marketing contributed to the growth of the start-up firms. Our findings were two as follows.First, though marketing contributed to the growth, this contribution is not good for the growth of scales, but for innovation. To purse for the scale of the firm was the theme on traditional small firm research, that is, industry dualism. The industry dualism criticized uneven growth of the companies within one country. This study insisted to change a regulation which contributed to growth of small firms. When a researcher emphasized that the marketing contributed to growth, he/she implicitly assumed that ultimate purpose of the small firms was the growth of the scale. As many studies noticed, a large scale company often tends to be bureaucratic. This trend sometimes forced personals behave formally and strictly. As a result, this organization yields innovation lesser than the organization with entrepreneurships.Second, this innovation was depended upon the atmosphere of trust structure among business transaction networks. As many researches revealed, since innovation cannot be controlled, to foster innovation often required many trial and error processes. This process might be success under trust condition. Because, under trust condition, a company belonged to this transaction knew that there was no guarantee for success. Even this low probability for success, a member would like to bet on its performance. We called this behavior as trust. Innovation often was failed, but a company supported innovators tried more and more. Marketing technique might be regarded as this kind of process. Marketing shall be the networking process in small firm growth studies.