Communicating crowdfunding campaigns: How message strategy, vivid media use and product type influence campaign success

Abstract

Online crowdfunding platforms allow creators to raise funds from a large crowd of distributed backers. In these platforms, creators’ campaign communication strategy plays a crucial role in persuading backers to support their projects. At the same time, creators may need to modify their campaign communication strategy depending on the product type they are raising funds for (i.e., tangible products or intangible services and experiences). However, research has not considered the possibility of product type moderating the effect of creators’ campaign communication strategy on campaign success. Drawing on theoretical insights from the advertising and services communication literature and employing a dataset of over 8000 reward-based crowdfunding campaigns from kickstarter.com, the current study tests the moderating effect of product type. A computational algorithm deciphered creators’ campaign communication strategy. The findings contribute to the literature by offering nuanced insights about the effects of creators’ campaign communication strategy on the success of tangible product and intangible service and experience campaigns.