Analysis of market engagement activities - towards a scale development for start-up entrepreneurs

This paper explores the role of market engagement activities for entrepreneurs in the process of starting a business. It develops a theoretical scheme of the customer engagement concept that functions as an initial step in the development of a market engagement scale for start-up entrepreneurs. The main finding of this research is that entrepreneurs are concerned with the market, customers, competitors and technologies in the process of starting their business. They go beyond what is defined as market orientation by actively integrating the customer into the product development processes.