Dear friends and colleagues,
We are excited to share with you a new call for papers on 'Understanding the Entrepreneurial Motivations, Dynamics, and Outcomes of First Fridays, Festivals, Farmer's Markets and other Community Events' at the Journal of Business Venturing Insights. Please find the full call at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-business-venturing-insights/about/call-for-papers
We look forward to reading your manuscripts!
Best,
The Special Issue Editors
CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue of the Journal of Business Venturing Insights
Understanding the Entrepreneurial Motivations, Dynamics, and Outcomes of First Fridays, Festivals, Farmer's Markets and other Community Events
Special Issue Editors:
Jeffrey A. Chandler (University of North Texas; jeffrey.chandler@unt.edu)
Jeremy C. Short (University of North Texas; jeremy.short@unt.edu)
Marcus T. Wolfe (University of North Texas; marcus.wolfe@unt.edu)
Submission Deadline: Open deadline (currently accepting submissions)
Special Issue Information:
An increasing number of popularly frequented, but lightly studied, entrepreneurial events occur regularly at community meetups worldwide. At these events, individuals strive to create and enhance their community through a series of loosely organized gatherings that combine art, entertainment, and entrepreneurial promise often associated with small business owners or hobbyists that sell their wares to a location-based market often searching for goods and services viewed as at least somewhat unique from other mainstream offerings. These events are critical to entrepreneurs as they serve as a vehicle to expand their customer base, build awareness for their products and brands, and even test out new product offerings in their local markets.
One community-based gathering common in the United States includes 'First Friday' events often used to invigorate historic main street areas where artists sell their work, food trucks offer unique fare, and others sell crafts, clothes, and items of interests to those in attendance. Other popular examples of such community-based events worldwide include bazaars, farmers' markets, and community markets. For example, night markets have historically been popular in Chinese culture as a popular event to bring together community members and attract individuals to engage with local entrepreneurs, and such events are increasingly appearing in the United States as well. Furthermore, farmers markets have traditionally been a mainstay throughout Europe and the UK, and serve as popular centers for community activity and commerce.
Such contexts are generally unique from more established and formal settings, such as accelerator programs or university incubators, which might be well funded or have an established history of cultivating startups and their success. Instead, these community-based gatherings involve both social and economic development in an environment of relatively little formality and regulation that enhances the individuals involved as well as the surrounding community.
As a topic that has aspects of understanding established phenomena (e.g., bazaars that have existed for centuries) to more recent emerging trends among entrepreneurs (e.g., emerging art walks as cities seek to reinvigorate historic downtown areas), we invite scholars to shed light on this popular and growing movement. We welcome all types of potential contributions, novel ideas, and creative approaches to inform this topic.
In our special issue, we seek to understand the unique dynamics, challenges, and promise of such community-based events. The following provides a few of the endless possible questions that would shed insight into this phenomenon.
Antecedents that motivate the formation of, and participation in, community-based events
- What types of entrepreneurs are drawn to engage in community events? What are their main motivations for participating?
- What opportunities, activities, and goods/services tend to be universally embraced in such contexts?
- Are there environmental characteristics (e.g., political, social, legal factors) that make certain communities more amenable to such events than others?
- What are the challenges and barriers faced by entrepreneurs in participating and successfully engaging in community events?
Beneficial outcomes of community based-events
- What factors help such gatherings thrive and create value for individual entrepreneurs as well as their greater communities?
- How do consumer's view a venture's participation in community-based events?
- Are there specific outcomes, both financial and non-financial, that are commonly experienced as a result of participating in community-based events? How do these outcomes vary from more traditional entrepreneurial endeavors?
- How can individuals and organizations participating within these events contribute back to the surrounding community or advance social causes?
Potential 'dark side' impacts of community-based gatherings
- Is there a point where such activities are seen more as shameless merchandising rather than a vehicle to embrace community support?
- Are there risks regarding potential exploitation of workers associated with local businesses? Are some offerings more likely to project, than deliver on the concept of 'buy local' often used in such contexts?
- How might such community-oriented events perpetuate pre-existing biases within certain communities?
- Where should scholars be skeptical of the value of such groups and gatherings?
- While the above ideas outline some possibilities, we seek to encourage all submission types common to JBVI that might shed insight on our special topic. Submissions embracing either the magic or myths associated with such events are equally encouraged. We are excited about learning about this unique dynamic together through your creative ideas to shed light on this important emerging community phenomena.
Manuscript submission information:
The Journal of Business Venturing Insights submission system will be open for submissions to our Special Issue from February 6, 2024. When submitting your manuscript to Editorial Manager, please select the article type "VSI: community markets". This Special Issue will have an open deadline.
This is a virtual special issue (VSI), which means that submitted papers will be handled as part of the normal submission flow of the journal, but will be designated as belonging to the special issue. Accepted articles will be published in the first available regular issue and will simultaneously appear in a special section dedicated to VSIs. In this way, the content of the special issue can be called up at any time, and it will be continuously expanding.
A VSI is NOT published in one batch but emerges over time as each contribution is published when ready. The implication of this VSI format is that it operates on an open deadline, making the publication process dynamic and timely. This virtual special issue is also supercharged in terms of speed and accessibility. We aim to help authors get their entrepreneurial problems out (or pathways to formulating them) in less than three months, from paper submission to online publication. Time to publication is one of the biggest hurdles to research impact. This expedited timeline is an effort to address this hurdle.
Questions about the Special Issue may be directed to the guest editors (please select copy all editors in your communication).
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Jeffrey Chandler
University of N. Texas
Lubbock TX
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