Guanxi circles and light entrepreneurship in social commerce: The roles of mass entrepreneurship climate and technology affordances

Motivated by the phenomenon of customer entrepreneurship in China and the associated research gaps, we conduct a case study to explore how customer entrepreneurs realize benefits from light entrepreneurship enabled by guanxi circles and social commerce affordances. Our study derives a process model that describes how customer entrepreneurs benefit from light entrepreneurship through acquiring knowledge and sharing knowledge within guanxi circles embedded in social media. We also demonstrate the roles of the mass entrepreneurship climate and the social commerce affordances in this benefit realization process. This study contributes to the research and practice with respect to technology-enabled customer entrepreneurship.