Entrepreneurial Marketing and Strategic Network Theory

The ongoing modularisation and disintegration of value chains into business components, which are flexibly aligned relative to interorganisational business reorganisations following core and service-oriented division of competencies, indicates the significance of analysing resource and relationship constellations across corporate boundaries. Strategic network theory can benefit the identification of industry structures, identification of corporate positions within networks as well as provide insights for resource allocation. Based on the analysis of entrepreneurial firms in the German wind-energy market, the process of network resource leverage is investigated here in the context of entrepreneurial marketing theory. In particular, the efficient and effective utilisation of network resources accessed via network partners is examined. With the combination of strategic network and entrepreneurial marketing theory, the author develops a market-oriented approach to the investigation of strategic corporate po-sitioning from a network perspective. In addition, he provides a research framework for further investigation of the network structure and content dimensions.