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

我们已经从经验上证实了营销对初创企业的成长做出了贡献。我们的研究发现如下两点：第一，虽然营销对企业规模的增长有贡献，但这种贡献不利于规模的增长，而是有利于创新。追求企业的规模是传统小企业研究的主题，也就是行业二元论。行业二元论批评了一国内公司增长不平衡的问题。这项研究坚持改变一项有助于小企业成长的规定。当研究人员强调营销对增长的贡献时，他/她隐含地假设小企业的最终目的是规模的增长。正如许多研究注意到的那样，大型公司往往倾向于官僚作风。这种趋势有时会迫使个人行为正式而严格。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，要促进创新往往需要许多反复尝试的过程。在信任条件下，这个过程可能是成功的。因为，在信托条件下，属于这笔交易的一家公司知道不能保证成功。即使成功的概率如此之低，一名成员仍愿意押注于其表现。我们把这种行为称为信任。创新往往是失败的，但一家支持创新者的公司尝试得越来越多。营销技巧可以看作是这样一种过程。市场营销应该是小公司成长研究中的网络过程。

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.