From hashtag to cashback: Success determinants in crowdfunders' user behavior

Abstract

Crowdfunding is a popular approach for entrepreneurs to obtain financial support and has therefore gained importance in the literature and practice in recent years. The communication behavior of starters that lead to the success of a campaign will be summarized and expanded by new findings. As a theoretical added value, this article offers the first attempt to transfer communication theories to the field of reward-based crowdfunding to reveal success determinants in crowdfunders user behavior. The purpose of this paper is to give practical recommendations to starters on how to run a campaign successfully and, more generally, on how they can make full use of social media. By analyzing the dataset of crowdfunding campaigns from Startnext, the largest German-speaking reward-based crowdfunding platform, new success factors are identified using multivariate analysis methods. The results show that social media can offer significant value for businesspeople in terms of marketing if it is used strategically and frequently.