The intersection of entrepreneurship and selling: An interdisciplinary review, framework, and future research agenda

Russell S. Matthews, Dominic M. Chalmers and Simon S. Fraser

Journal of Business Venturing, 2018, vol. 33, issue 6, 691-719

Abstract: Selling is integral to entrepreneurship, yet it has rarely been a focal topic of analysis for entrepreneurship scholars. To address this, we undertake a broad-ranging systematic literature review of research that in some way explores selling within entrepreneurial contexts. We inductively develop a framework that orders extant research into selling antecedents, activities, contexts, and outcomes. Then, drawing on these entrepreneurship-selling intersections, we suggest opportunity theory can be extended by integrating critical insights from selling literatures. In particular, we address ego-centric views of entrepreneurship which prioritize entrepreneurial agency, and advocate for the incorporation of customer agency into synchronized processes of opportunity identification, refinement, and exploitation. The article concludes that a promising avenue for future theory development resides in the study of situated sales interactions, which can serve as an empirical vista to the underexplored entrepreneur-customer nexus.

Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:33:y:2018:i:6:p:691-719

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2018.04.008

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