(Press-News.org) Researchers from the University of Texas, University of Chicago, University of Notre Dame, and London School of Economics published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines whether entrepreneurs in emerging markets can benefit from marketers' help.
The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Do Marketers Matter for Entrepreneurs? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Uganda" and is authored by Stephen Anderson, Pradeep Chintagunta, Frank Germann, and Naufel Vilcassim.
Can marketers help improve the world? While this question may seem vast and unknowable, this new study proposes otherwise. The researchers propose that marketers can help entrepreneurs in emerging markets grow their businesses. And flourishing entrepreneurs in these markets can then improve lives, sustain livelihoods, enhance overall living standards, and strengthen societies.
Entrepreneurs are ubiquitous in emerging markets. In 2010, more than 31% of the adult population in Uganda, the setting for the study, was either starting a business or running a business less than four years old. However, many emerging market entrepreneurs struggle to make ends meet and their firms' growth rates are low, stifling the positive impact they could have on society. The low growth rates seem to result from most businesses being undifferentiated and failing to attract customer interest.
Marketing helps firms differentiate by attempting to answer the question, "Why should the customer buy from the firm and not elsewhere?" Thus, we examine whether entrepreneurs in emerging markets can benefit from marketers' help.
To test marketers' effect on emerging market entrepreneurs, the researchers conducted a randomized controlled field experiment with 930 Ugandan businesses. The experiment allowed them to examine the impact of a business support intervention in which international professionals from varying functional backgrounds (e.g., marketing, consulting) volunteered time to help small-scale entrepreneurs. Results show volunteer marketers are effective at helping entrepreneurs grow sales, profits, assets, and employees. Specifically, compared to control firms, the entrepreneurs supported by volunteer marketers grew monthly sales by 51.7% on average, while their monthly profits improved by 35.8%, total assets increased by 31.0%, and paid employees rose by 23.8%. An analysis of interactions between volunteers and entrepreneurs indicates the marketers spent more time on product-related topics than other volunteers during the intervention. Furthermore, analyses indicate the marketers helped the entrepreneurs focus on premium products to differentiate in the marketplace. As Anderson explains, "Because small-scale businesses form the commercial backbone of most emerging markets, their performance and development are critically important. And marketers' positive impact on the businesses highlights the need for the field's increased presence in emerging markets. "
Chintagunta continues that "Given the positive and direct impact marketers can have on growth outcomes, we hope our study will motivate marketing practitioners to work with entrepreneurs and early-stage ventures in emerging markets." Governmental and non-governmental organizations actively serving emerging markets should also benefit from our findings when designing and implementing future business support services. Entrepreneurs should also take note of our findings and solicit marketers' help. Finally, business schools could incorporate versions of this 'remote coaching' intervention into their emerging market programs with a focus on matching entrepreneurs with their marketing students. Multinationals can participate in future remote marketing coaching interventions like this, too. "This endeavor, we believe, could be a win-win for the entrepreneurs and the multinationals: The entrepreneurs' businesses would likely grow and the multinationals would likely have more satisfied employees, accrue corporate social responsibility-related benefits, and learn about opportunities (and threats) that exist in emerging markets" says Germann.
INFORMATION:
Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242921993176
About the Journal of Marketing
The Journal of Marketing develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders around the world. Published by the American Marketing Association since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline. Christine Moorman (T. Austin Finch, Sr. Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University) serves as the current Editor in Chief.
https://www.ama.org/jm
About the American Marketing Association (AMA)
As the largest chapter-based marketing association in the world, the AMA is trusted by marketing and sales professionals to help them discover what is coming next in the industry. The AMA has a community of local chapters in more than 70 cities and 350 college campuses throughout North America. The AMA is home to award-winning content, PCM® professional certification, premiere academic journals, and industry-leading training events and conferences.
https://www.ama.org
BINGHAMTON, NY -- Customized diets and lifestyle changes could be key to optimizing mental health, according to new research including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
"There is increasing evidence that diet plays a major role in improving mental health, but everyone is talking about a healthy diet," said Begdache, an assistant professor of health and wellness studies at Binghamton University and co-author of a new paper in Nutrients.
"We need to consider a spectrum of dietary and lifestyle changes based on different age groups and gender," she said. "There is not one healthy diet that will work for everyone. There is not one fix."
Begdache, who is also a registered dietitian, believes that ...
Home health visits change to virtual ones during pandemic
'We don't have to rely on mental health professionals'
As perinatal depression soars during pandemic, there's a growing need for treatment
CHICAGO --- Perinatal depression has soared during the pandemic. But many mental health professionals are overwhelmed and can't take on new clients.
Good news comes from a new Northwestern Medicine study finding paraprofessionals generated similar reductions in depressive symptoms as mental health professionals when delivering a group-based cognitive-behavioral therapy intervention.
The study findings are based on ...
New research has revealed that the diets of early lizards and snakes, which lived alongside dinosaurs around 100 million years ago, were more varied and advanced than previously thought.
The study, led by the University of Bristol and published in Royal Society Open Science, showed lizards, snakes, and mosasaurs in the Cretaceous period already had the full spectrum of diet types, including flesh-eating and plant-based, which they have today.
There are currently some 10,000 species of lizards and snakes, known collectively as squamates. It was originally understood their great diversity was acquired only after the extinction ...
Patients with type 2 diabetes that were treated with a weekly injection of the breakthrough drug Semaglutide were able to achieve an average weight loss of nearly 10kg, according to a new study published in The Lancet today.
Led by Melanie Davies, Professor of Diabetes Medicine at the University of Leicester and the Co-Director of the Leicester Diabetes Centre, the study showed that two thirds of patients with type 2 diabetes that were treated with weekly injections of a 2.4mg dose of Semaglutide were able to lose at least 5% of their body weight and achieved significant improvement in blood glucose control.
More than a quarter of patients were able to ...
Pregnant patients in Colorado may be told about parenting and adoption, but not abortion. This is according to a new study led by Kate Coleman-Minahan of the University of Colorado College of Nursing published in the END ...
Our brains are non-stop consumers. A labyrinth of blood vessels, stacked end-to-end comparable in length to the distance from San Diego to Berkeley, ensures a continuous flow of oxygen and sugar to keep our brains functioning at peak levels.
But how does this intricate system ensure that more active parts of the brain receive enough nourishment versus less demanding areas? That's a century-old problem in neuroscience that scientists at the University of California San Diego have helped answer in a newly published study.
Studying the brains of mice, a team of researchers led by Xiang Ji, David Kleinfeld and their colleagues has deciphered the question of brain energy consumption and blood vessel density through newly developed maps that detail ...
When you think about your carbon footprint, what comes to mind? Driving and flying, probably. Perhaps home energy consumption or those daily Amazon deliveries. But what about watching Netflix or having Zoom meetings? Ever thought about the carbon footprint of the silicon chips inside your phone, smartwatch or the countless other devices inside your home?
Every aspect of modern computing, from the smallest chip to the largest data center comes with a carbon price tag. For the better part of a century, the tech industry and the field of computation ...
Imagine you're driving up a hill toward a traffic light. The light is still green so you're tempted to accelerate to make it through the intersection before the light changes. Then, a device in your car receives a signal from the controller mounted on the intersection alerting you that the light will change in two seconds -- clearly not enough time to beat the light. You take your foot off the gas pedal and decelerate, saving on fuel. You feel safer, too, knowing you didn't run a red light and potentially cause a collision in the intersection.
Connected and automated vehicles, which can interact vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and between vehicles and roadway ...
Type 2 diabetes, once considered an adult disease, is increasingly causing health complications among American youth. A research review published in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine suggests physicians should work to more aggressively prevent pediatric diabetes.
Because few pediatric Type 2 diabetes treatment options are available, prevention is unusually important. To improve health outcomes, the paper's authors recommend physicians conduct regular screenings of children and adolescents, adopt a high level of suspicion, and intervene early and often with families who have children at risk for prediabetes and T2 diabetes.
"Pediatric type 2 diabetes is more progressive and aggressive than adult-onset Type 2 diabetes," ...
Boulder, Colo., USA: Several articles were published online ahead of print
for GSA Bulletin in February. Topics include earthquake cycles in
southern Cascadia, fault dynamics in the Gulf of Mexico, debris flow after
wildfires, the assembly of Rodinia, and the case for no ring fracture in
Mono basin.
Jurassic evolution of the Qaidam Basin in western China: Constrained by
stratigraphic
succession, detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology and Hf isotope analysis
Tao Qian; Zongxiu Wang; Yu Wang; Shaofeng Liu; Wanli Gao ...
Abstract:
The formation and evolution of an intracontinental basin triggered via the
subduction or collision of plates at continental margins can record
intracontinental tectonic processes. As a typical ...
