A systematic review of family business and consumer behaviour

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review on the intertwining of family business and consumer behaviour literature. Leveraging bibliometric software, we systematically reviewed 178 articles from 1991 to 2022. Five research clusters are identified: (1) the familiness of the firm: a social capital perspective, (2) promoting corporate social responsibility, (3) branding the family firm, (4) family firm characteristics and (5) the family firm brand. This study puts forward a novel conceptual framework to analyse the concept of familiness from a dual perspective: the business perspective to investigate how and why family firms communicate their family nature and the consumer perspective to explore how stakeholders perceive family firms’ unique characteristics. Moreover, we show a change in research patterns in family business and consumer literature, providing a deeper understanding of the conceptual structure of the field. Finally, we suggest 28 future research questions.