A Study of Small Business Owners’ Personal Characteristics and the Use of Marketing Information in the Food and Drink Industry: A Resource-Based Perspective

Market orientation (MO) – which is the propensity of a firm to collect and utilise information from the market – is an important leverage of competitive advantage. This paper helps to better understand why some owner-managers engage with market intelligence why others simply do not. The relationship among the owner-manager’s personal characteristics, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and MO are explored, despite existing literature neglected testing these simple but important relationships. We adopt a resource-based view (RBV) of the firm perspective. This study aims to establish whether the personal characteristics of the entrepreneur impact the use of marketing information. More specifically, this study tests entrepreneurial attitude orientation, marketing expertise and demographic variables for an effect on the use of different types and sources of marketing information as well as the frequency of information usage. Data were collected through a regional survey of 296 small business owners and senior managers in SMEs in the Scottish food and drink industry. Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and regression analysis was used to test hypothesised relationships. Personal characteristics such as age (p<.05), gender (p<.002), previous experience (p<.05), and marketing expertise (p<.05) are critical factors affecting information use other than EO (p>.05). Implications for policy makers and practitioners involving small business subsidies and entrepreneurs’ marketing training are discussed.