Crowdfunding: How motives behind creating a reward-base campaign affect campaign creator’s communication strategies

Abstract: Crowdfunding has rapidly gained popularity over the last decade and now accounts for tens of billions of dollars annually. Although the general public mainly perceives crowdfunding as an alternative means of getting funding, it has been demonstrated that there is a number of motives that entrepreneurs may have when launching a campaign on a crowdfunding platform. Despite that, little scholarly research exists on the topic of how different motives of campaign creators to run a crowdfunding campaign influence the way they communicate with the crowd. This qualitative research seeks to build on the existing literature on the motives that lie behind entrepreneurs’ decision to engage in crowdfunding activities. It targets a grey area in academic literature and examines how campaign creators choose communication strategies depending on what they want to achieve through the crowdfunding campaign. Semi-structured interviews with 9 crowdfunding campaign creators were conducted and empirically analyzed. From the findings a theoretical model of motives and communication was developed. The analysis of the relationship between motives and communication strategies employed in successful crowdfunding campaigns contributes to the developing field of research and allows practitioners to get insights into how different communication approaches can be used to reach their goals.