| Abstract [eng] |
Crowdfunding is a way of financing used to raise funds for a project by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people using online platforms rather than the traditional way of big investments from a small number of investors. Crowdfunding is a possible way to fund projects but to do it most efficient it is needed to study the main success factors for money raising by crowd. This aspect indicates that knowledge of what makes crowdfunding in business successful is a practical value. Research object - factors in action of successful crowdfunding. Objectives of the research: 1. On the basis of theory analysis, identify how crowdfunding is defined, its types and main platforms. 2. To theoretically specify the factors related to crowdfunding success importance 3. To design the research methodology for investigating the factors that influence crowdfunding success 4. To add new success factors from research findings, discuss the findings of the research and relate collected data with theoretical concepts, and to draw the conclusion and recommendations Crowdfunding is proved to be rapidly growing sector of financing ways: in number of crowdfunding campaigns, in transaction value and average amount of funding per campaign. It is expected crowdfunding to grow in all those financing rates meaning that crowdfunding success factors are now important to research more than ever. Because of a small number of studies and outdated research findings, the contribution of the research about crowdfunding, success factors remain unclear for nowadays projects to implement and use. Findings in literature about crowdfunding concept revealed that crowdfunding is a mediator between founders and funders - it’s an opportunity to raise funds by getting small amounts of money from many funders who are not related to one another. Crowdfunding is classified into two sections: donation and reward based which is classified into active and passive participation. Platforms of crowdfunding focuses their mindset on different projects: Kickstarter focuses on creative project and requires to meet funding goal, Indiegogo focuses on tech and design and does not require to meet funding goal, GoFundMe focuses on lasting ideas and also does not require to meet funding goal, Patreon is based on whole different subscription style payment for creators. There were 3 groups of crowdfunding success factors found, each of them had their own success factors: marketing related factors: depth of project, video material; team related factors: project founders, social media connections; project specific related factors: available updates, pledging goal size, duration of funding period. Empirical purpose of this research is to reveal crowdfunding success factors. Empirical research is divided into 5 stages: preparation for research, research process organization, data collection, data analysis and generalization. To perform empirical research qualitative approach was chosen - semi structured interviews. Semi structured interview guidelines were formed with as many open ended questions as it was possible considering the research purpose. Data from vocal interviews records were transcribed into a text format and then coded with the MaxQda program. In this empirical research to calculate how much respondents are needed to disclose necessary information and this information to be reliable theoretical saturation method is used: all interviews were done one by one and after the 5th interview 6th and 7th interviews started to only repeat data that were found in the first 5 interviews meaning that saturation of this empirical research was achieved. Research instrument in this thesis is divided into 3 modules: project activity starts, crowdfunding process sequence and crowdfunding justification for the project. Research took 2 months - from 2020 March 2nd till 2020 April 31th. Interviewed respondents had to meet all of these criteria: to be worked or founded with crowdfunded project and their project was successfully crowdfunded. Researcher guaranteed 100% anonymity to all respondents and their projects because of their personal insights and confidentiality terms about the project. Empirical research findings were collected from 7 interviews. There were 7 success factors in 3 groups of factors that repeated in literature and empirical research: factors related to marketing - depth of project description, video material; team related factors - project founders, social media connections; project specific related factors - available updates, pledging goal size, duration of funding period. There were 5 new factors that were found during empirical research in addition to previous 7 success factors: factors related to marketing - influencers impact, bonuses system, crowdfunding as an advertisement tool; project specific related factors - chosen platform, community building. |
