| This dissertation investigates the relationships between marketing strategies and new venture performance in a transitional economy. It aims to integrate the marketing and new venture literatures by understanding how new high technology ventures compete via marketing strategies to achieve financial and market success.; The first objective of the study is to conceptualize the dimensions of marketing strategies. Through a comprehensive literature review and field interviews, five dimensions of marketing strategies adopted by new high technology ventures in China's transitional economy are identified: product innovation, marketing differentiation, market breadth, marketing alliance, and political strategy. These dimensions are further classified as competitive marketing strategies (comprising the first three) and relationship-based marketing strategies (comprising the last two).; Based on strategic contingency and environmental determinism perspectives, a theoretical framework is developed to investigate the relationship between marketing strategies and new venture performance. In the framework, it is posited that (1) marketing strategies have unique contribution to new venture performance and that (2) the effectiveness of competitive marketing strategies is moderated by environmental factors and relationship-based marketing strategies.; Based on data collected from 184 new high technology ventures in the Beijing High Technology Experimental Zone (BEZ) of China, empirical results show that the five dimensions of marketing strategies do exist in new ventures. The results also indicate that marketing strategies make significantly unique contributions to new venture performance. Moreover, consistent with the contingency hypotheses and the literature, environmental turbulence is shown to moderate the effectiveness of all of the competitive marketing strategies. Dysfunctional competition and political strategy have stronger impacts on the effectiveness of marketing differentiation and market breadth strategies than on that of product innovation. Institutional support tends to have stronger influence on the performance impact of product innovation strategy than on that of marketing differentiation and market breadth strategies. Furthermore, contrary to the hypotheses, results of the study show that marketing alliances strategy has a significantly negative impact on the relationship between competitive marketing strategies and new venture performance. |
