| Summary: | This study aimed to explore the growth strategies used by small and medium sized technology start-up companies in China to acquire customers. This was to determine how Chinese technology start-ups identify customer acquisition strategies and the ways in which they apply them to their business. A qualitative interpretivist approach was undertaken, which encompassed conducting semi-structured in-depth telephone interviews on six owners and senior managers of small and medium sized technology start-ups based in China.
An analysis of the interviews using inductive thematic analysis revealed that Chinese technology start-ups use customer acquisition strategies such as social media marketing, paid advertising, word-of-mouth, freemium models, and additional strategies which include free trials, direct marketing and more. This is because they are cost-efficient and convenient strategies that do not require start-ups to utilise extensive resources to implement them. Moreover, the findings of this research indicated that Chinese technology start-ups utilise an array of indicators when choosing customer acquisition strategies for their companies. Indicators such as competitor behaviour, affordability, resource availability, market research and strategy efficiency influenced how they identified strategies. However, the start-ups reported struggling to implement more complex strategies such as pay-per-click which implies that limited resources, a lack of experience and expertise affects the way start-ups implement customer acquisition strategies.
Keywords: customer acquisition, small and medium enterprises, technology, start-ups, resource-based view theory.
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