Commercial diplomacy: conceptual analysis and factors shaping its empirical impact on trade and investments

The activities and relevant means/instruments of conducting Commercial Diplomacy (CD) recognised by relevant literature need further clarification and conceptualisation. Scholars usually point out the agents (state/non-state actors) or the goals of the concept (exports/investments, business promotion), without stressing the instruments/means available to relevant actors, while conducting CD. This paper contributes to a better understanding of CD, since we propose - after a thorough theoretical and empirical literature review - two conceptual dimensions of activities and relevant instruments of CD, cognitive and political, which we also take into account in our proposed definition of the concept. Thus, we introduce a new holistic framework of CD, where next to the actors and the goals, the concept is additionally characterised by the activities and relevant means, both integrated into the aforementioned categories/dimensions, defined respectively. Last but not least, we point out specific qualitative factors that affect the impact of CD on international trade/investment flows.