Special Issue

Entrepreneurship and Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior

Entrepreneurs play an important role in consumer satisfaction and societal flourishing.  By recognizing opportunities to redeploy resources (Kirzner, 1973) and creating innovative products, services, and production methods (Schumpeter, 1942), entrepreneurs provide consumers with increased variety, lower prices, and more goods and services.  Moreover, entrepreneurship can also result in new economic, social, institutional, and cultural environments (Rindova, Barry, and Ketchen, 2009). Entrepreneurs look for new ways to meet unmet consumer needs, better and more efficiently than existing or competitive products. If successful, this will result in consumer satisfaction, which is, or should be, the telos, or ultimate goal, of all marketing activities (Larsen and Wright 2020). This means that properly executed entrepreneurial activities constitute an antecedent to consumer satisfaction. But entrepreneurs may also dissatisfy their consumers if they do not meet or exceed consumer expectations. A dissatisfying consumer experience with a product or service may lead to the creation of a new or better product to meet consumer needs. Thus, properly conceptualized, entrepreneurship may be either a cause or a consequence of satisfying or dissatisfying encounters with consumers. To date, entrepreneurship has only been lightly studied in the field of consumer satisfaction, dissatisfaction and complaining behavior (CS/D&CB).

Entrepreneurship may also play “a vital role in creating and sustaining the type of dynamic and competitive marketplace that supports consumer satisfaction and broader wellbeing.” Conversely, well-being or satisfaction in life “may also play a role in promoting a culture of entrepreneurship” (Routledge et al. 2021, p. 1).

The purpose of this special issue of the Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior is to examine the role of entrepreneurship as a cause or consequence of satisfying customer experiences, or as a catalyst in creating marketplaces that produce satisfying or dissatisfying experiences. Topics for this special issue of the journal may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Entrepreneurship as a cause or consequence of satisfying/dissatisfying experiences.
• The influence of human, financial, or social capital on the creation of entrepreneurial entities that lead to satisfying experiences.
• The influence of entrepreneurship on brand love and brand hate.
• Product dissatisfaction that leads to new entrepreneurial ventures.
• Entrepreneurship and consumer switching behavior.
• Entrepreneurial approaches to service recovery, complaint resolution, and complaint management.
• International aspects of entrepreneurship as a cause or consequence of satisfying or dissatisfying consumer experiences.
• How life satisfaction and existential wellbeing positively influence attitudes about entrepreneurship and vice versa.
• The role of entrepreneurship in economic opportunity, social mobility, and human flourishing.
• The impact of entrepreneurship on theory development in CS/D&CB.
• Market orientation and entrepreneurship.
• Methodologies for studying entrepreneurship and CS/D&CB.

Onnolee Nordstrom, the Ozbun Chair of Entrepreneurship at North Dakota State University and John Bitzan, the Menard Family Director of the Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth at North Dakota State University will be the co-editors for this special issue, which will be published in the fall of 2023.

The Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction, and Complaining Behavior (JCS/D&CB) was first published in 1988 under the editorship of H. Keith Hunt and Ralph L. Day. Now in its 35^th year of publication, the journal has published many highly cited articles (Larsen and Wright, 2017) and is ranked as a B journal on the Australian Business Deans’ Council list.

Of note for this special issue, the JCS/D&CB was founded as an entrepreneurial venture. The antecedent of the journal was a biennial conference, organized by Hunt and Day, which focused on consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction. The conference began in 1977 and the first volume of the JCS/D&CB was published in 1988 using proceeds from the conference. Until Keith Hunt retired in 2005, the journal was entirely funded as an entrepreneurial venture.

Please submit papers by the deadline, June 1, 2023. Go to jcsdcb.com, click the MAKE A SUBMISSION button, and under SECTION, select Special Issue: Entrepreneurship and CS/D&CB.

Kirzner, I.M. (1973). Competition and Entrepreneurship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Larsen, V., and Wright, N.D. (2020). Aggregate consumer satisfaction: The telos of marketing. Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior, Vol. 33, 63-77. https://jcsdcb.com/index.php/JCSDCB/article/view/361.

Larsen, V., and Wright, N.D. (2017). Impact on and of the Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior: A 30-year retrospective. Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior, Vol. 30, 5-18. https://jcsdcb.com/index.php/JCSDCB/article/view/255.

Rindova, V., Barry, D., & Ketchen Jr, D. J. (2009). Entrepreneuring as emancipation. Academy of Management Review, 34(3), 477-491. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2009.40632647

Routledge, C., FioRito, T.A., Bitzan, J.D. and Abeyta, A.A. (2021). Does existential wellbeing promote positive attitudes about entrepreneurs? Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior, Vol. 34, 1-15. https://jcsdcb.com/index.php/JCSDCB/article/view/474.

Schumpeter, J.A. (1942).  Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper.