Conclusion

The concept of SLM helps to bring together the innovation and drive of the entrepreneur with the structured strategic framework of marketing. As a concept or approach, it attempts to explain the success of companies and products that have emerged from their own market niches . Some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world today did not succeed through the use of traditional top-down approaches to marketing (such as evaluating the market and environment looking for a niche to ˜exploit ). Rather, SLM takes the bottom-up approach by:

• identifying a personal desire , within the context of a social grouping (niche market)

• designing, promoting and providing an innovative product or service to the niche market.

Entrepreneurs and innovators rarely fit the mould of the traditional, organisation-based marketer. Marketing models and techniques based on assumptions of skills and resources are often inaccessible to new marketers and too intrusive to be effective within the context of niche marketing. Consequently many new ventures and entrepreneurs miss out on the benefits that can be gained through a systematic approach to marketing practice.

SLM recognises that most innovations emerge from the translation of a personal need into a specific product. The SLM framework assists in explaining and analysing bottom-up marketing successes.

By acknowledging the importance of the entrepreneur s personal experiences and lifestyle as a contributing factor for marketing success, SLM validates the intra-niche approach to product conception and development and moves away from the restrictions of the top-down marketing management approach of many larger, more established organisations.

SLM guidelines for marketing intra-niche innovations

Features of an innovation suitable for SLM techniques

1. Innovations focused on a niche market need.

2. Innovations that help define a lifestyle.

3. Innovations that are based on a belief in a lifestyle or attitude to a need.

4. Innovations that are highly focused.

5. Innovations that would have a direct, positive impact on the innovator regardless of who brought it to market.

SLM techniques for intra-niche entrepreneurs

1. Focus on identifying a solution to own unmet needs first, then research the market to determine to what extent others have the same needs.

2. Use ethnographic research techniques to determine the need for the product in the niche.

3. Encourage testing of products within the niche.

4. Develop effective feedback mechanisms.

5. Make the core philosophy of serving, not exploiting, the market as the driving force behind innovation.

Things for the SLM marketer to avoid

1. Myopic view of the product (that is, a faith so strong in the product in its current form that you are not prepared to make necessary modifications to suit other niche members ).

2. Letting intuition over-ride business sense.

3. Losing the intra-niche focus by innovating for the sake of creating new products rather than to serve the needs of the market.

4. Forgetting the needs of the niche when expanding into the broader marketplace and thereby losing the custom and commitment of the firm s core customers.

5. Forgetting to use the tools and techniques upon which successful marketing has been based for nearly fifty years .