Online sales and the expansion of enterprises’ innovation boundaries: on the innovation incentive of digital-real integration

Online sales have been deepening the integration of digital and real economies and driving enterprise development in recent years, but their impact on the expansion of enterprises’ innovation boundaries remains underexplored. Based on constructing a heterogeneous innovation theory model, this paper conducts empirical tests using two-way fixed‑effects models, combined with unbalanced panel data of A-share listed enterprises from 2015 to 2024. The results showed that online sales significantly expand enterprises’ innovation boundaries and help increase the number of patents. From mechanism perspectives, online sales encourage companies’ substantive technological innovation, resulting in technological breakthroughs through broadening market information channels, promoting knowledge and technology spillovers and altering enterprises’ innovation strategies. Heterogeneity analyses revealed that the effect of online sales is more pronounced for enterprises with a higher degree of digital transformation, larger scale and low market share. This study provides new empirical evidence for exploring how online sales can be leveraged to empower enterprise innovation and the innovation incentives of digital-real integration