An institutional analysis of marketing practices of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan

This paper uses an institutional perspective to examine the interplay among government intervention, manufacturing systems and business approaches and its impacts upon the marketing activities of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. An integrative approach, blending the narrative method and content analysis, is adopted to analyse 391 published news stories about Chinese owner-managers in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and to disentangle the effects of environmental differences. SMEs in China, come under strong government influence, carry out minimal planning in marketing and their marketing activities are implicit. They adopt a relation-oriented marketing approach and place emphasis on building relations with government agencies. Most SMEs in Hong Kong operate under the original equipment manufacturing systems and they tend to invest minimal amounts of time and money in marketing. SMEs in Hong Kong adopt a transaction-oriented marketing approach, place emphasis on pricing, product service and sales forecasts, and adapt promptly to market changes. Taiwanese SMEs operate in a politically constrained but economically free environment. They invest substantial amounts of time and money in marketing and fostering customer and dealer relations. Upgrading to the original brand manufacturing systems, Taiwanese SMEs develop their own brands and adapt their marketing plans explicitly and substantially in response to the specific marketing environment. Based on the research results, a tentative schema is proposed depicting the interplay and its impact on the marketing practices of Chinese SMEs.