The cultural intertwining of consumption and entrepreneurship: A selective review of qualitative studies

Abstract

As technology and new business models make it easier for digital consumers to exploit what they produce, practical differences between producers-consumers and consumers-entrepreneurs become less identifiable. An analysis of existing literature shows that authors often regard this increasingly common intertwining of consumption and entrepreneurship as a unidirectional process from the former to the latter. The impact of entrepreneurship-related elements on consumption is frequently not considered. This paper uses a combination of systematic and narrative procedures to review existing interpretive consumer research literature selectively. It aims to highlight the relative importance given to entrepreneurship as an influencing factor. The Theory of Cultural Entrepreneurship (TOCE) and an energetic account of desire are used to classify selected journal articles according to a thermodynamics-inspired fourfold typology: (1) COLD-Entrepreneurship|COLD-Consumption, (2) COLD-Entrepreneurship|HOT-Consumption, (3) HOT-Entrepreneurship|COLD-Consumption, and (4) HOT-Entrepreneurship|HOT-Consumption. The review concludes by suggesting avenues for further research.