Identification of Innovative Marketing Strategies to Increase the Performance of SMEs in Iran

Abstract

The changing of today’s marketplace makes businesses to adopt innovative approaches and new resources to rely on in this
situation. In order to competing in global markets, organizations should move to lower production costs, higher qualities and
short product lifecycle that lead into higher customer satisfaction. Marketing methods, especially those were used
traditionally as a blueprint in business activities are gradually fading from markets and innovative methods. In this paper,
using a mixed method research, we studied 116 small and medium-sized firms (SME’s) of Iranian East Azerbaijan province’s
food industry. We identified four groups of innovative marketing methods based on product, price, place and promotion
based strategies, which product and promotion have meaningful effect on innovative marketing strategies. Results also
indicate that the impact of marketing strategies on innovative is through entrepreneurial orientation of firms. Consequently,
the study revealed that the entrepreneurial orientation affect firm’s performance via innovativeness.