Brand crowdfunding using followers boosted through gamification affordances: insights from two emerging markets

Abstract

Purpose Brand crowdfunding, launched through brands’ social media platforms, can provide a myriad of crowdfunding and branding benefits, such as strengthening brands’ social networks, validating product launches, generating mass exposure and enabling cocreation. Gamification positions brand crowdfunding as an exciting and joyful activity that more deeply engages prosumers. Anchored on resource-based theory, theory of planned behavior and service-dominant logic, this paper aims to develop a brand crowdfunding framework for established brands with insights from two emerging markets: China and India. Design/methodology/approach A deductive cross-sectional design is used to gather data from an established brand’s (e.g. Xiaomi) social media followers in China (n = 826) and India (n = 358), which is analyzed through PLSc-SEM. Findings The results reveal that social media brand engagement is an antecedent of brand crowdfunding participation, brand crowdfunding intention is a predictor of brand loyalty and gamification is a significant moderator in technology-oriented societies. Originality/value The paper develops a brand crowdfunding framework that provides insights on how established brands can leverage crowdfunding to enhance their new product development process. The results contribute to the social media brand engagement, crowdfunding, gamification and emerging markets literature.

A brand prominence perspective on crowdfunding success for aftermarket offerings: the role of textual and visual brand elements

“…Second, while there is some branding research in the literature on crowd-based initiatives, such as crowdsourced product innovation (Herter et al , 2023) and cocreation (Chen et al , 2022; Nawaz et al , 2023), branding perspectives are noticeably absent in the context of crowdfunding (Moradi and Badrinarayanan, 2021). Given the increasing popularity of crowdfunding as a financing mechanism for new ventures (Moradi et al , 2023), this study not only delineates the differential effects of brand elements on crowdfunding success but also sheds light on how such elements can complement the effects of other campaign elements.…”

“…Crowdfunding has emerged as an expedient method for entrepreneurial ventures to generate capital for developing aftermarket offerings (Kuppuswamy and Bayus, 2018; Maciel and Weinberger, 2023; Mollick, 2014; Moradi and Badrinarayanan, 2021; Nawaz et al , 2023). Popular crowdfunding platforms, such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, have made it easier for these ventures to compete against original equipment manufacturers and large aftermarket firms that possess deep resource stocks, established channel relationships, captive customer bases and steady revenue streams (Durugbo, 2020; Mantrala et al , 2006).…”