| Course | MKT 711 Marketing and Managing the Customer Relationship (MKT/711) |
|---|---|
| Week | 7 |
| Paper type | Doctoral entrepreneurial marketing analysis |
| Length | about 1,195 words, 4 double-spaced pages plus title page and references |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | University of Phoenix |
| Program | DBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MKT 711 Week 7
Selling a Service Nobody Has Bought Yet: Entrepreneurial Marketing and Effectual Logic for a Dairy Sensor Firm's New Advisory Venture
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
MKT/711: Marketing and Managing the Customer Relationship
Week 7 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
HerdSense Technologies, its pilot farms and its venture plans are composites written for a model paper.
HerdSense Technologies, the composite Madison company that sells dairy cow health sensors and software, has four dairy scientists, including founder Dr. Ingrid Solberg, a former herd veterinarian. In Week 1, expertise emerged as the strongest driver of customer relationships, and in Week 3, expert reviews became part of the renewal playbook for large herds. The scientists now propose a new venture: HerdSense Advisory, a paid service in which they use each farm's sensor data to coach managers on fertility, transition-cow health and heat stress. They believe it could become a significant revenue line. But no one knows which farms would pay, how much, or whether the service should be monthly coaching, an annual review or something else. This paper analyzes the venture through entrepreneurial marketing research and designs a launch.
Defining Entrepreneurial Marketing
Morris et al. (2002) defined entrepreneurial marketing as the proactive identification and exploitation of opportunities for acquiring and retaining profitable customers through innovative approaches to risk management, resourcefulness and value creation. They identified seven dimensions: proactiveness, opportunity focus, calculated risk taking, innovativeness, customer intensity, doing more with limited resources and value creation. The construct integrates entrepreneurship and marketing and applies to new ventures within established firms as well as to startups.
Causation and Effectuation
Sarasvathy (2001) distinguished causation, in which a decision maker takes a particular effect as given and selects among means to achieve it, from effectuation, in which a decision maker takes a set of means as given and selects among possible effects that can be created with them. Effectual reasoning rests on principles that include affordable loss instead of expected return, strategic alliances instead of competitive analysis, exploiting contingencies instead of exploiting prior knowledge and controlling an unpredictable future rather than predicting an uncertain one.
Marketing Under Uncertainty
Read et al. (2009) compared expert entrepreneurs with experienced corporate managers solving the same marketing problems for a hypothetical new venture. The expert entrepreneurs relied far more on effectual logic: they paid less attention to market research and prediction, emphasized affordable loss, sought partnerships and pre-commitments and treated surprises as opportunities. The authors argued that effectual approaches suit situations where markets do not yet exist. The study supports using effectual logic for HerdSense Advisory, a service with no established market.
Why This Venture Is Uncertain
A traditional plan would begin with market research to forecast demand and set price. But farmers have little experience buying data-based coaching, so surveys would measure guesses rather than behavior. Comparable services, such as independent dairy nutritionists, are priced in many ways. And the right form of the service is unknown. These are the conditions under which prediction is weakest.
HerdSense's Means
Effectuation starts with means: who the firm is, what it knows and whom it knows. HerdSense is a respected company among its dealer-served farms. Its scientists know dairy health deeply and can read sensor data in ways farmers cannot. It knows 1,400 farms, 60 dealers, dozens of veterinarians and researchers at state universities. Its data cover years of herd behavior.
The question is not what the market for dairy coaching will be, but what HerdSense can make with the people who already trust it.
Affordable Loss
Instead of projecting returns, the leadership will set the most it is willing to lose on the experiment: $250,000 over 12 months, mainly the scientists' time and travel. If that money is spent without a viable offer, the venture stops, and the firm will still have gained knowledge useful for retention.
Partners and Pre-Commitments
Following effectual logic, HerdSense will seek partners who commit before the service is defined. It will invite 12 farms, chosen from dealer-served and direct mid-size customers, to join a founding group. Each farm commits to monthly sessions for six months and pays a modest fee of $300 a month, showing real willingness to pay. Two veterinary practices will join as partners, ensuring that coaching supports, rather than competes with, herd veterinarians. A university dairy extension specialist will help design the coaching method in exchange for anonymized learning, with farmer consent under the Week 5 data policy.
Co-Creating the Offer
The service will be shaped with the founding farms. In the first two months, scientists will try three formats with different farms: a monthly video review of herd data, a quarterly on-farm visit and an alert-driven consultation when the system detects patterns such as rising early-lactation disease. Farms will report which format changed decisions and results. The offer that emerges will reflect what farms actually used.
Exploiting Contingencies
Surprises will be treated as information. If farms value coaching on heat stress more than fertility, the service will shift. If veterinarians want to resell coaching, a partner channel may emerge. If the Brazilian pilot from Week 6 shows interest, the service may become part of that entry.
Decision Rules
At six months, the leadership will decide based on three tests: at least 9 of 12 farms choose to continue at a higher price, at least half of farms report a measurable improvement such as fewer cases of a target disease and the scientists' time per farm falls enough to serve 100 farms with a team of eight. If all three are met, the service will scale through dealers and veterinary partners. If none are met, it will stop.
Marketing the Founding Group
The founding group will not be advertised. Invitations will come personally from dealers and from Dr. Solberg, emphasizing that farms will help design the service. This customer intensity, a dimension of entrepreneurial marketing in Morris et al. (2002), builds commitment and gives early participants a sense of ownership that makes them credible advocates later.
Integrating With the Core Business
Even if the paid venture fails, coaching may reduce churn among participating farms, which Week 2 showed is highly valuable. The venture therefore carries an option value beyond its own revenue.
Pricing the Service Without a Forecast
Effectual logic also changes how price is set. Rather than estimate a price from surveys, HerdSense will start with the founding fee, observe whether farms continue at a higher price at six months and test two price structures with new farms: a flat monthly fee and a fee per cow. The structure farms accept, and the one that covers the scientists' time, will become the launch price.
Limits of the Approach
Effectuation is not a guarantee. It can produce many small experiments that never scale, and partner commitments can lock a firm into a narrow version of an idea. Planning still matters once a service proves itself and growth requires hiring, pricing and channel decisions. The approach is best seen as the first stage of a process that becomes more causal as uncertainty falls.
Conclusion
Entrepreneurial marketing research describes how firms create opportunities under uncertainty, and effectuation offers a logic for acting when prediction fails. HerdSense Advisory fits those conditions. Starting with the firm's means, capping losses, enlisting committed farms and veterinarians, co-creating the offer and setting clear decision rules gives the venture a disciplined way to discover whether a market exists and what it should look like.
References
Morris, M. H., Schindehutte, M., & LaForge, R. W. (2002). Entrepreneurial marketing: A construct for integrating emerging entrepreneurship and marketing perspectives. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 10(4), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/10696679.2002.11501922
Read, S., Dew, N., Sarasvathy, S. D., Song, M., & Wiltbank, R. (2009). Marketing under uncertainty: The logic of an effectual approach. Journal of Marketing, 73(3), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.73.3.001
Sarasvathy, S. D. (2001). Causation and effectuation: Toward a theoretical shift from economic inevitability to entrepreneurial contingency. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 243-263. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378020
What the MKT 711 Week 7 instructions ask
Week 7 of MKT 711 often asks doctoral students to analyze entrepreneurial marketing and recommend marketing approaches for a new venture, product or business model under uncertainty. Expect to define entrepreneurial marketing, compare it with traditional planning-based marketing, apply concepts such as effectuation, opportunity recognition, creative use of scarce resources, customer co-creation and experimentation, and propose a launch approach. Some prompts focus on small firms or startups; others on corporate ventures. A strong doctoral paper synthesizes the relevant research, explains when entrepreneurial approaches outperform planning, applies them to a specific venture with evidence and designs a launch that manages risk while allowing learning. Support the argument with scholarly research and APA references.
How this MKT 711 Week 7 example is built
HerdSense's own dairy scientists believe farms would pay for expert coaching based on the data the collars already collect, but no one knows what farms would buy, at what price or in what form. The paper first defines entrepreneurial marketing as proactive identification and exploitation of opportunities through innovative approaches to risk, resources and value creation. It then contrasts causal reasoning, which starts from a goal and predicts a market, with effectual reasoning, which starts from available means and builds the market with committed partners. Research comparing expert entrepreneurs and managers shows that experts favor effectual logic under uncertainty. An effectual launch follows: start with 12 farms that commit time, co-create the service, cap losses and let pre-commitments shape the offer.
MKT 711 Week 7 grading rubric: where the points go
Entrepreneurial marketing papers at this level are assessed on conceptual precision, fit between approach and uncertainty and the quality of the launch design. High-scoring work defines entrepreneurial marketing and effectuation accurately, explains through research why and when they outperform traditional planning and applies them to a real venture with attention to the firm's means, partners and constraints. The launch plan should show how the firm will learn, limit downside risk and decide whether to scale. Graders value critical discussion of the approach's limits. Reviewers also look for a launch that could actually be run with the firm's people and budget. Scholarly writing, a balance of seminal and current peer-reviewed sources, logical structure and accurate APA formatting complete a strong paper.
MKT 711 Week 7 help: mistakes to avoid
A common problem is describing entrepreneurial marketing as guerrilla tactics or low-budget promotion. The construct concerns how firms find and shape opportunities under uncertainty, not only how they advertise. Another frequent weakness is applying effectuation by name while writing a conventional forecast-based plan. Show the means, affordable loss and partner commitments that drive decisions. Students also ignore when planning is appropriate; where markets are predictable, causal approaches work well. Explain why this venture is uncertain. Some papers propose experiments without saying what result would change the decision. Define decision rules. Finally, connect the venture to the firm's existing relationships, which are often its most valuable entrepreneurial resource.
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MKT 711 Week 7 questions, answered
What does MKT 711 Week 7 usually cover?
It usually covers entrepreneurial marketing, including opportunity recognition, effectuation, co-creation with customers and experimentation, applied to a new venture or product under uncertainty.
Where can I find a free MKT 711 Week 7 sample paper?
The entrepreneurial marketing analysis of a composite dairy sensor firm's advisory venture is free to read above with its launch design.
What is effectuation in entrepreneurship?
Effectuation is a way of deciding in which founders begin from who they are, what they know and whom they know, decide based on what they can afford to lose, form partnerships with committed stakeholders and shape the market rather than predict it.
How is entrepreneurial marketing different from traditional marketing?
Traditional marketing plans from research and forecasts in known markets, while entrepreneurial marketing proactively creates and exploits opportunities under uncertainty, using innovation, resourcefulness and close customer involvement.
When should a firm use effectual rather than causal reasoning?
Effectual reasoning tends to work better when the future is unpredictable and markets do not yet exist, while causal planning suits stable markets where goals and demand can be forecast.
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