The survival consequences of intellectual property for retail ventures

While the value of patents is documented widely for technology ventures, whether retail ventures can improve their survival odds from patents, copyrights or trademarks remains unexplored. Given the relatively lower survival rate of retail ventures, whether investing in intellectual property could improve their survival odds is an important research question for both the retailing and entrepreneurship literatures. Based on a sample of 585 retail and 2406 non-retail ventures in the Kauffman Firm Survey, retail ventures have a lower chance of survival. Compared to non-retail ventures, patents, trademarks or copyrights in retail ventures increase the odds of survival. The findings have implications for resource allocations related to intellectual property in retail ventures.