Summary
The study ‘The Language that Gets People to Give: Phrases that Predict Success on Kickstarter” seeks to understand the effects social communication can have on a kickstarter’s ability to pull in donations at faster rates. The study utilized scraping software to analyze over 45,000 crowdfunded projects from Kickstarter.com, over 9,000,000 phrases, and a multitude of other variables. Some key factors that the study concluded as correlating to increased donations include:
- Reciprocity: Patrons are more likely to respond to a project if they believe that they will receive something in return for their donation.
- Scarcity: People place higher value on products they believe to be limited in quantity or exclusive to a certain group of people (typically those who donate above a threshold).
- Social Proof: Users are more likely to follow in the footsteps of previous donors who received recognition and/or praise for their participation in the crowdfunding.
- Social Identity: People respond to a sense of belonging, especially if it is to a group they already identify with. In order to further perpetuate their sense of belonging, they will donate to validate their presence within the community.
- Liking: Fairly straightforward, a product or a person behind a project will achieve greater success if it/they are well-liked.
- Authority: Greater attention will be given to a project where an authority figure is present (i.e. a film based project involving a fairly well-know or well-respected director).
- Sentiment: People are more likely to respond to a project that provides them with a deeper emotional reaction (positive or negative).
Reflection
It makes sense that the above listed factors should influence people’s decision making process online since they are fairly reliable ways of influencing people in the physical world. The concepts of reciprocity and scarcity are seen all the time in marketing and commercials for products (“buy within the next 10 minutes and get a second one free”). Social proof, social identity, and liking is apparent when products point out how past users had positive experiences. Authority can be seen in celebrity endorsements such as having famous actresses in make-up commercials. Sentiment is apparent in television based donation-seeking commercials such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal’s (in)famous one involving images of sad animals displayed over the song ‘Arms of an Angel’. Even the negative phrases have a logical point, such as the phrase “even a dollar” allowing users to get away with giving sparse amounts of money rather than encouraging large donations through more positive reinforcement. The data mining techniques the study used were also very interesting as they give me a lot of ideas about how they can be applied to our semester project. Seeing a study where R was utilized to a more advanced degree than we observed in class was also a distinguishing tie-in.
Questions
- How greatly can phrases with equivalent meaning but different wording impact success? For example, two phrases that offer the same level of reciprocity but with different phrasing.
- How much does pop culture benefit/hinder the area of ‘social identity’? How much can too much specialization into a certain group of people hurt a kickstarter’s ability to attract donations or attention?
- Can this research be applied to sites not involved with crowdfunding (such as a regular social media site or a blog’s ability to attract fans)?
- Where can we see crowdfunding marketing evolving given this data?
- People often read the comments of a kickstarter to get a feel for it? How can the presence of comments be added to this study to provide greater range of perspective?
