‘Take my advice’: Entrepreneurial consumers and the ecosystemic logics of digital platforms

André Luís A. da Fonseca, Paula Chimenti and Roberta D. Campos

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2023, vol. 193, issue C

Abstract: Technology affordances democratize access to entrepreneurship, making it relatively common for consumers to expand their social media activities to become digital entrepreneurs. The decreasing distance between consumption and entrepreneurial practices on digital platforms such as Twitch, Spotify, and YouTube amplifies the influence of cultural elements germane to entrepreneurial ecosystems. This article investigates the effect of this societal change on the discourse and behavior of consumers through the lens of institutional logics theory. It uses computational social science methods to analyze 1,909,370 comments posted on 249 videos published on a YouTube channel that unboxes technological products. The findings show that many end-users offer business advice to digital influencers as if they are collaborating with a buddy entrepreneur. A quantitative procedure demonstrates that these individuals have more subscribers than the average end-user. Further, the percentage of comments on this interaction correlates positively with end-user (consumer) engagement. This relationship indicates that a digital influencer's ability to inspire entrepreneurial behavior among end-users may benefit his/her business. It also suggests the existence of an entrepreneurship-related continuum from consumers to digital influencers.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial ecosystem; Consumer behavior; Institutional logics; Digital platform; Computational social science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:193:y:2023:i:c:s004016252300286x

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122601

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