Marketing Strategies in High-Tech Start-Ups

Abstract

High tech start-ups have a high degree of risk associated to them because they are linked to high technology and unknown markets. They lack the marketing experience and their focus may lie on developing a better technology and product. Books have been written about marketing in high-tech companies, but there are no books that specifically target marketing in high-tech start-ups. The main objective of this research is to find out how marketing is organized in high tech start-ups. This research examines the similarities and differences between what is written in literature and how it is employed in practice by the start-ups. This gives us a better understanding of the gap between literature and the practice. This research aims to find related aspects between high-tech marketing strategies literature and how it is employed in high-tech start-ups. The required qualitative data is collected through desk research and through semi-structured interviews with 9 high tech start-ups. The start-ups are categorized in three categories: young, mature and spin offs. Basic marketing aspects are used in this research to test the marketing. The aspects in consequential order are: Strategy types, strategy creation, market orientation, market research, high-tech customer, pricing, and advertising and branding. The findings of this research is that young and mature high tech start-ups have difficulty with some of the basic marketing aspects in their marketing strategies. Spin offs are dealing with their marketing according to what is written in literature and are more successful. Young start-ups have the most difficulty with their marketing because of their lack of knowledge and resources. Mature start-ups have learned through experience to use more marketing to become more successful. A better understanding is created about the limitations of high-tech start-ups in their marketing, new methods can be established that tackle both the complexity of the high-tech environment and the limitations of the high-tech start-ups. Further research on this topic is needed create a better understanding about the limitations.