Abstract

Increasingly, marketing is changing its role within the organization: from a specific unit, it is becoming an integral part of the structure of a company and it communicates with other functions. Likewise, in small businesses, can marketing make a difference? What marketing capabilities are necessary to grow? This study aims at analyzing more in depth the transformation process of an Italian small firm from the food industry, which introduced a specialized marketing function in order to address market changes and develop specific marketing capabilities that increased performance. Results show the emergence of a conceptual model of the process followed by the firm and composed by five phases with several reconfiguration stages.