Introduction

Entrepreneurs and innovators have characteristics that set them apart from other business people. Entrepreneurs often act with insufficient information and in high-risk environments, situations that mainstream managers increasingly try to avoid. Innovations often come about because an individual is dissatisfied with the current products on offer or simply because an entrepreneur found that they were simultaneously satisfying the needs of a sizeable but neglected portion of the market when satisfying their own need for a new product.

While conventional old-school marketing increasingly tries to avoid the rough and tumble areas of entrepreneurial activity, a new cluster of street level marketers is emerging from this turbulent environment. Street level marketers are members of a defined psychographic or lifestyle niche market, who develop and market products or services to satisfy themselves and the needs of members of that niche. Street level marketers take advantage of the models, concepts and tools of traditional marketing to test their personally focused product and ensure that the product appeals to more than just themselves. In other words, they use the best of current marketing practice and apply relevant frameworks to maximise their products success rather than relying primarily on intuition or ˜just knowing that the product will succeed.

This chapter explores the role of street level marketing in the process of turning innovative and entrepreneurial ideas into saleable products and services.