Crowdfunding in New Product Development

Abstract

Marketing researchers have suggested that crowdfunding (CF) plays roles in marketing research and promotion in new product development. However, empirical evidence of these roles is lacking. In this study, we tested hypotheses of these roles by conducting a survey of organizations that implemented projects on a large Japanese reward-based CF platform. Our findings reveal two mediating effects between the number of backers and new product performance (NPP): (1) learning from backers and improving new product quality, and (2) enhancing promotional performance. The results also show that consumer product unfamiliarity moderates the relationship between promotional performance and NPP. However, we did not find a statistically significant mediating effect of competitive entry on the relationship between the number of backers and NPP.

Keywords

• crowdfunding
• new product development
• marketing research
• promotion