The entrepreneur in marketing

 Commercial activities are created to provide goods or services.  During their evolution many firms expand their activities, often with new products and new markets. At the  time of creation the entrepreneur usually tries to meet and existing need rather than to stimulate a new demand or highlight an unconsciousness one.

   Normally he will have established connections, a specific skill or knowledge and an awareness of requirements of his potential customers. At this time his business activity is probably clear and he is unlikely to have felt the need to consider fully the scope of his operations or to formulate his operational problems in depth. But this is not always the case where the entrepreneur concerned has already had extensive managerial experience. An example from the industry is provided by the miscast numerical control (wales) ltd. The present managing director, Jim Davies , saw a requirements for an expert organisation totally commuted to the application of  numerical control systems. So in the mid 1960s he set up a team operating in small premises in Leicester where he had daily access to any part of the country and where there was an abundance of skilled engineering labour. His company  and it's associates are pioneers of the use of numerical control as the technological Esperanto of Europe, since numerical control dismisses the main difficulty of international collaboration- the main language barrier among engineers and technicians.

   In the industry facing midcast the idea marketing pitch is technical competence, so the company saw its opportunity, knew its market and , because it had always kept its finger on the pulse, was able to organise almost from the start the full range of services, a programming package, necessary for sound growth. Now based in south wales, the company operates a twenty four shift. In 1972 it was given a BNEC  export award in recognition of overseas sales, which from a few hundred pounds in 1969, had reached £250,000 by march 1971 and £1 million by mid 1972. Each step of the way had been preset and organised according to best management practice.

   Establish  companies, on the other hand, operating in a mixture of growing, static, or declining markets , and who need to reappraise their business functions regularly and to access their future prospects for survival, regrettably do not seem to practise the same discipline. Often failure to do so may result in lost share, product obsolescence, redundancies or even bankruptcy.

   Acceptance of marketing principles and the use of marketing techniques have sometimes been forced on companies by competitive pressures in the market place. In an effort of stimulate demand for their own brands, manufacturers seek product innovation and attempt to improve the effectiveness of their operations by researching and developing the needs of consumers. Industry companies have been slower to adopt marketing techniques, for their production, in unit terms, has been relatively small and their number of customer comparatively low. They do not often achieve a dominant market share and any contraction in immediate purchasing level is spread evenly over the larger part of the market. Industrial companies Also tends  to be more widely diversified in their product range, and a depression in one industry may be  compensated in another. Because of their size such companies tend to be more flexible and can adjust to lower production rates more readily.

   One could well argue that the adoption of marketing techniques by industrial companies has been forced on them by stagnant national economies and competition from the whole of manufacturing industry for the limited capital investment available. In this sense typewriters are competing against computers for the industrial buyer's money.