Marketing Strategy and Startup Performance
(A2019-9020)

AUTHORS

Zhuoer Qiu, Goethe University Frankfurt; Simone Wies, Goethe University Frankfurt

KEYWORDS

Marketing Strategy; Marketing Competence; Startup Performance

ABSTRACT

Startups are important drivers of national economies yet statistics of tremendous failure rates abound. In this project, we study whether and how startups develop marketing and other organizational competences and how these decisions influence their likelihood of survival and performance. We find that marketing competence is among the first 3 competences developed in 31% of our sample firms. Importantly, startups that develop marketing competence in earlier venture stage and possess higher level of marketing competence achieve superior performance. We show that even though operating in a resource-constraint environment, startups should allocate resources to develop and manage their marketing competence.