Revisiting Resilience: Investigating the Impact of Value-Based Marketing on SMEs Perseverance in Germany and Austria

Abstract

This thesis explores how value-based marketing (VBM) elements impact the concept of organizational resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Germany and Austria during economic crises. Through the increasingly volatile and uncertain business environments, particularly SMEs are vulnerable due to their limited resources. However, they possess unique strengths like agility and close customer relationships, benefiting them. By integrating the resilience concept and VBM, this study aims to explore which VBM elements most effectively enhance SMEs’ ability to adapt and thrive in times of crisis. Purpose and Research Design: This research’s primary objective is to assess the extent to which different elements of VBM, namely the elements customer centricity, customer value proposition (CVP), and valuebased selling (VBS), contribute to the organizational resilience of SMEs. Therefore, a quantitative research design was adopted, employing a structured online survey, which targeted SMEs decision-makers in marketing and sales, or executive positions in Germany and Austria. For these purposes a purposive, judgmental sampling strategy was used, generating 107 valid responses. This data was then analyzed through multiple linear regression to evaluate the significance and strength of each VBM component in relation to organizational resilience. Findings and Contribution: The empirical findings demonstrate that VBM as a holistic concept contributes significantly to SMEs resilience, with an adjusted R2 of 0.590, indicating that approximately 59% of the variance in resilience is explainable by VBM practices. Included in the components studied, CVP and VBS emerged as the statistically significant predictors (p

Date of Award	2025
Original language	English
Supervisor	Andreas Zehetner (Supervisor)