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Abstract Entrepreneurial marketing (EM) emphasizes the proactive and innovative exploitation of opportunities by combining entrepreneurship and marketing principles. While prior research has shown that EM positively affects SME performance, there has been a dearth of relational analysis examining how specific EM dimensions are cognitively prioritized by practitioners in emerging-economy contexts. This study addresses this gap by identifying and assessing EM scale items based on their perceived significance and cognitive salience among experienced SME owners/managers in India. Critically, it challenges the assumption that risk-taking and resource leveraging are universally central EM dimensions by demonstrating their lower cognitive salience among established SME owners operating under structural resource constraints and institutional uncertainty. Data were collected from 219 Indian SME owners/managers operating for at least 15 years. The EM scale items were prioritized through Relative to an Identified Distribution (RIDIT) and Grey Relational Analysis (GRA). The items of customer orientation, resource leveraging and market-driving were found to be highly prioritized. The findings of RIDIT were verified through GRA, which showed a correlation of 99 % between their results. The study reconceptualizes EM as a context-contingent configuration of dynamic capabilities. These findings provide a theoretically grounded framework to guide SME owners/managers in allocating limited resources more effectively.
Sahu et al. (2026) studied this question.