Mediation Effect of Entrepreneurial Marketing in the Relationship between Entrepreneurial Orientation and Performance of Greenhouse Businesses in Jiroft County

Given the importance of performance as the main indicator of the success of businesses, in the recent years, researchers have always been seriously seeking to investigate the factors affecting it. Meanwhile, entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial marketing have more attracted as compared with others factors due to the necessity of businesses tendency toward risky activities and innovative actions on the one hand and increasing diversification of customers’ expectations and demands and intensified competition in the market on the other hand. Considering the importance of issue, this descriptive survey research was undertaken to investigate the mediating effect of entrepreneurial marketing in relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and performance. The population of this study was all of greenhouse owners in Jiroft County in Kerman Province (N= 1022). A sample size of 246 was selected using a stratified sampling method with proportional allocation. Data was collected through the standard questionnair and was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) multivariate technique. The Bootstrapping method was used for testing mediating effect. The results showed that entrepreneurial orientation had a positive and significant effect on performance (p-value=0.001, β=0.780) and explained about 61 percent of its variances. In addition to this, the results indicated that sum of indirect effect of entrepreneurial orientation on performance through the variable of entrepreneurial marketing was significant (p-value=0.001, β=0.463) and entrepreneurial marketing partially mediated positive effect of entrepreneurial orientation on performance. Based on findings, it can be concluded that it is necessary for maximizing effect of entrepreneurial orientation on performance of greenhouse businesses to strengthen entrepreneurial marketing and its components.