"Living the Dream" : A closer look into passionate consumer-entrepreneurship in a developing Latin American country

Discua Cruz, Allan and Halliday, Sue Vaux (2023) "Living the Dream" : A closer look into passionate consumer-entrepreneurship in a developing Latin American country. Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, 35 (6). pp. 1-27. ISSN 0827-6331

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Abstract

This paper contributes to entrepreneurship theory by conceptualising consumer-entrepreneurship as a means to a desired end: to ‘live the dream’. This complements more common functionalist and economically driven definitions. We see this kind of entrepreneurship as avowedly embedded in consumer interests or hobbies. Such conceptualisation is important as we note the move within entrepreneurship scholarship away from articulations of a solitary heroic endeavour influenced by individual factors and behaviours, towards a more relational, interwoven perspective. We draw from literature on consumption, the creation of meaning and on entrepreneurship to weave together this understanding of consumer-entrepreneurship. Based on a qualitative approach, we analyse primary data from four businesses in a developing country to see how porous the work/life boundaries are for actual practitioners ‘living the dream’. We find that the love of a hobby drives the business; that this is shared by fellow enthusiasts; and that from this connection a network of resources is assembled. Such resources support identity projects for the consumer-entrepreneur. This results in blurred work/leisure/life boundaries. Consumer-entrepreneurship, seen as a social practice to achieve life projects, complements entrepreneurship seen merely as a business practice to generate economic outcomes.