Sailing with the tide: How key market exchange audiences influence entrepreneurial framing strategies

How do market exchange audiences influence entrepreneurial framing strategies? Research to date has not adequately addressed how entrepreneurs use framing strategies with key market exchange audiences in mind – specifically, consumers and peer producers – when launching compelling collective identities that evolve fields. In this research note, I propose a unique audience-centred perspective of entrepreneurial framing that differs from the more actor-centred framing found in past literature. This research note outlines distinct entrepreneurial framing strategies – contesting, coexisting, inclusive or harmonizing framing – that help entrepreneurs navigate varying consumer and peer producer audience contexts when launching novel collective identities. Coexisting and contesting framing are oppositional in nature to incumbents but differ with regard to addressing incumbents in either a contesting or compatible manner. Inclusive and harmonizing framing aim to resonate or bridge new collective identities with existing ones to gain acceptance of that innovation by a wider, unreceptive audience. I also address the fluidity and challenges of these framing strategies in achieving and maintaining a collective identity's legitimacy over time. In so doing, I address an undertheorized topic of how entrepreneurial framing strategies can engage varying consumers and peer producer audience dynamics – both receptive and unreceptive ones – over time.