Summary:
The paper “The Language that Gets People to Give: Phrases that Predict Success on Kickstarter” examines the factors that contribute to the success of crowdfunding projects on Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a crowdfunding site for various projects to potentially earn all or no funding from online backers depending on whether the project’s funding goal is reached or not respectively. The paper builds off a similar prior study by looking at the language of the project pitch in addition to more project attributes. It was found that language such as word choice and phrasing played a large role in the success of crowdfunding projects. The phrases were selected by processing and filtering scraped project descriptions. Additional variables included project goal/duration, number of pledge levels, minimum pledge amount, featured in Kickstarter, video present/duration, etc. The phrases were categorized into six categories: reciprocity, scarcity, social proof, social identity, liking, and authority.
Reflection:
I found the results of the paper to be interesting and not too surprising since language is powerful and important if used correctly, especially since seemingly similar words have different conations. It is used all the time in marketing, so the results of the paper could be applied to other crowdsourcing site or products in general since the phrases were not selected for specifically Kickstarter. For example, the language aspect could possibly be applied to a product on Amazon or a channel on YouTube to increase success rates.
Questions:
- Are the phrases equally influential to all audiences/readers/consumers of the project?
- How different do the results vary depending on the site?
- Are the phrases only influential to the reader if the reader is not aware of the influence?
- How well does this apply to non-crowdsourcing sites?
- How many people read the project description completely versus just watching the video/pictures.
- Would first impressions or prior knowledge of the project affect the success?
