Customer Involvement in the Entrepreneurship process: a Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Directions

Despite the significant role of customers in the entrepreneurship process, the understanding of customer involvement remains fragmented primarily between entrepreneurship and marketing literature and lacks a comprehensive integration into a higher-level theorization of the entrepreneurship process. Owing to its multidisciplinary nature, this domain has predominantly advanced within the confines of their respective disciplinary boundaries, with limited cross-disciplinary integration. We argue that this discrepancy between theory and practice catalyzes reevaluating the role of customers in the entrepreneurship process. In doing so, this review examines 102 peer-reviewed academic studies published until 2022 in 59 academic journals, covering ten research disciplines. Herein we use the three broad categories in the entrepreneurship process: opportunity identification, innovation, and opportunity exploitation, and employ an inductive categorization approach to systematically integrate research on customer involvement. Taking a systems perspective, we offer an integrated theoretical framework for research on customer involvement by breaking it down into inputs, processes, outcomes, and moderators. We then utilize this framework to identify gaps or ambiguities in prior literature and suggest future research directions to help move this nascent literature forward and advance our understanding of the customers’ role in the entrepreneurship process.