Date of Award
2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration
Department
General Business
First Advisor
Georges Tsafack
Abstract
This study aimed to deepen the understanding of the relationship between Entrepreneurial Selling and business success in Brazil through two different studies about the antecedents and consequences of Entrepreneurial Selling.
Using grounded theory and an exploratory-confirmatory mixed methods design, this dissertation demonstrates that Entrepreneurial Selling is crucial for business success. The database was sufficiently diverse for an in-depth analysis of the entrepreneurial Brazilian context: 777 entrepreneurs participated in the studies, ranging from first-time founders and serial entrepreneurs, leading B2B, B2C, and B2B2C companies from 31 segments, from startups struggling to make their first million to established companies already earning more than billions of Brazilian reais.
Moving from discovery to validation, these studies examine how entrepreneurs think and act when facing challenging decisions in an emergent economy. The exploratory phase was conducted with forty-one Brazilian founders selected through purposeful, snowball, and theoretical sampling techniques. The qualitative research used a rigid mixed-method iterative process that comprises three stages, combining different methods with several reliability measures in one theory development effort.
The exploratory analysis uncovered two distinct entrepreneurial profiles: the Analytical Planner, characterized by structured decision-making logic and strategic foresight, and the Proactive Seller, distinguished by adaptive action, opportunity-driven behavior, and deep customer engagement.
Building on the Proactive Seller profile, the confirmatory phase empirically tested the relationship between entrepreneurial selling and company performance. A survey was distributed to 13,000 entrepreneurs affiliated with a financial cooperative in southern Brazil, a region that had recently experienced substantial economic disruption due to extreme weather events.
A total of 736 valid responses were collected. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), the analysis confirmed that the Proactive Seller profile significantly predicts company performance (b = 0.210, p < 0.001), with Entrepreneurial Selling Orientation as the most influential factor (b= 0.772, p < 0.001), followed by Effectuation (b = 0.316, p = 0.021).
The aggregate qualitative and quantitative findings can contribute to the entrepreneurship and personal selling fields, advancing Entrepreneurial Selling theory and practice. The final theoretical model offers a new explanatory framework that can be helpful to understand who Brazilian entrepreneurs are, why and how they act, and what they get for their companies.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Fernandes, Renato, "ENTREPRENEURIAL SELLING AND BUSINESS SUCCESS IN BRAZIL" (2025). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 4482.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/4482