Expressing entrepreneurial visions: a sense-making perspective on entrepreneurial marketing

Marketing literature has often emphasized the factors hampering marketing planning and strategizing in small firms. Recent sents at the basis of branding and marketing communication. We state that through sensemaking and the resulting discourses entrepreneurs gain access to and coalesce valuable resources and they clarify and make visible to consumers the value and meaning of novel entrepreneurial ideas. The conceptual model poses sensemaking and the construction of discourses at the center of entrepreneurial marketing. Marketing in small firms, according to the proposed model, is strictly related to entrepreneurial sensemaking and marketing communication in small firms is nurtured and structured by the construction of articulated discourses by the entrepreneur. The model is explicated and completed through the analysis of three case studies in mature industries.