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Entrepreneurs have changed how they finance their ideas. Rather than putting efforts on finding corporate investors, they prefer to find individual investors/funders, which could also serve as their future customers. This is commonly known as crowdfunding, particularly reward-based crowdfunding since the individual funders will get non-financial rewards (e.g., the products). One of the most famous crowdfunding platforms is Kickstarter. The platform has successfully raised US$ 6.8 billion since its inception in 2012 [i]. Through crowdfunding, entrepreneurs/initiators not only able to validate their new business but also gain brand visibility, grow customer base, and even co-create the products.  

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Since crowdfunding relies on the individuals to back the project (backers), one of the key elements of having a successful crowdfunding project is interaction in the form of comments. For a crowdfunding project, it is more likely to be successful if it obtains a higher number of comments. Moreover, people in general put more trust on the comments being made by other people rather than the entrepreneurs.  

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“Could you add more buttons since the touch screen doesn't work under water? And for that matter, could you make the buttons pressable under water?” (Project: Bangle.js 2: The Open Smart Watch, Source: Kickstarter, 2021)

 

“I backed, but only to comment, for now.  I have your non-stick pan, I’m interested in the stock pot and the saucier but I don’t wanna buy everything just to get it.  Can we have separate pledges or add-ons for just certain things?” (Project: Misen Nonstick Essentials, Source: Kickstarter, 2021)

 

Comments such as the above generate conversations. The above comments were replied to by many other backers who agreed and disagreed with the idea, which in the end garner higher attention and visitors to the project page.

 

Nevertheless, it is not easy to generate more comments. What should entrepreneurs do to increase the number of comments?

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Let’s learn from Coolest Cooler – a state-of-the-art cooling box with ice crushing blender, USB charger, and waterproof Bluetooth speaker – which has been deemed as one of the most successful projects on Kickstarter. In order to solicit more comments, Ryan Grepper (the initiator) informed his backers that the most frequent comments on the product’s functionalities will be incorporated to the product’s design. By doing this, the backers are engaged in a co-creation activity, which will lead them to feel that their comments are useful.

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Higher number of comments, particularly co-creation comments, are good for the project’s success. However, do different types of co-creation comments have the same level of effectiveness?

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There are three types of co-creation that can be observed within the entrepreneurs’ and backers’ dialogues in crowdfunding, namely co-ideation, co-evaluation, and co-design [ii]. Co-ideation is backers' comments that suggest new ideas which can be about product, services, packaging, in which backers use informal language. In other words, co-ideation are new ideas proposed by the general public. For example, in the case of Coolest Cooler, when a backer proposed to add lights to the cooler box. Co-evaluation is backers' comments that evaluates another person’s ideas. It can be an evaluation of the entrepreneur’s ideas or other backers’ ideas. Another backer might support the idea of adding lights to the cooler box since many people who use it (e.g., campers, fishermen) frequently use it at night time. Co-design is backers' comments that suggest new ideas in which backers use more technical language and show special expertise. In short, co-design are new ideas proposed by expert. A bit similar to co-ideation, the difference is in the level of expertise. For example, a suggestion by an engineer to increase the duration to keep the temperature in the cooler box. 

 

Using big data analytics approach, the research shows that not all backers co-creation impact crowdfunding success. Only co-ideation and co-evaluation have a positive impact on the number of backers [iii]. This means that new ideas proposed by the general public (co-ideation) and the evaluation of new ideas (co-evaluation) are more important that ideas proposed by expert (co-design). The study also shows that co-ideation and co-evaluation comments are not only beneficial for the entrepreneurs to improve the product, but these comments also send positive signals to potential backers about other backers’ interest in the project. Thus, it is important for the entrepreneur to learn how to proactively encourage backers to give co-creation comments to achieve crowdfunding success.

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References

[i]  Kickstarter. (2022). Kickstarter-Stats. https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats

[ii] Quero, M. J., & Ventura, R. (2019). Value proposition as a framework for value cocreation in crowdfunding ecosystems. Marketing Theory, 19(1), 47-63.

[iii]  Primanti, H., Japutra, A., Van Doorn, S., Ekaputra, I. A., & Hati, S. R. H. (2022, December 5-7). What and When to Post Comments? The Impact of Co-creation Comments on Reward-based Crowdfunding Success. In ANZMAC 2022 conference proceedings. Anzmac.

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