Between tribes and markets: The emergence of a liquid consumer-entrepreneurship

This study explores how the networked environment of consumer tribes, turned into an online public, can support consumers' capacities to undertake entrepreneurial projects. The work explores how the consumer-entrepreneur designs, constructs, negotiates, and develops a new business venture, born as a tribal endeavor and later evolves in a startup business. The work introduces the notion of a liquid entrepreneur: a member of a consumer tribe who can understand its values, translate them into market offers thanks to an online curatorship addressed beyond the tribe to the online publics, and serve consumers by assuming a liquid position that oscillates between the tribe and the wider marketplace. The research follows an ethnographic methodological approach, studying the exemplar consumer's entrepreneurial project Ferro29. It also provides interpretive managerial insights on how to fine-tune consumer entrepreneurship venture projects with the ethos and the sensitivities of consumer legacies, such as tribes and publics.