Corporate crowdfunding as a marketing communication tool

Crowdfunding, an alternative way to obtain financial capital from the “crowd”, has developed into a prosperous global industry. At present, there are hundreds of crowdfunding websites worldwide serving as the intermediary for the interaction between fund-seekers and their target audience. Corporate crowdfunding is not a rare practice in the business field either. In addition to meeting the capital needs of entrepreneurs and start-ups, crowdfunding has been employed by companies for marketing purpose (Lanbert & Schwienbacher, 2010). Although there are some academic fruits in the discipline of crowdfunding, few attempt has been made to understand the dynamics of corporate crowdfunding and its marketing effect. This study is one of the pioneer researches that focuses on corporate crowdfunding. Proposing that corporate crowdfunding could be regarded as a marketing communication tool, this research explored its marketing effect by analyzing the data of funders’ perception collected from in-depth interviews. Dota 2, a popular e-Sports game that has achieved continuous success of corporate crowdfunding in the past three years was chosen as the case, with its Chinese market becoming the focus of this study. This research reveals that Dota2’s crowdfunding greatly enhanced players’ engagement, further realizing important marketing effects, namely, promoting products or services among existing customers, building long-term relationship with customers, and generating hype to enlarge customer base. Both customer loyalty and purchasing intention were increased during and after the funding process. Plus, it turns out that these positive effects achieved among funders and potential ones could help facilitate further funding. In terms of successful determinants, the study found that meeting funders’ psychological needs and offering extra rewards constitute the most essential factor. E-Sports fandom played a key role in understanding the motivational needs of Dota2 players. Effective communication conducted in the integrated game community is another important factor, which ensured the publicity of crowdfunding and availability of updates. Additionally, the findings confirm the marketing principles of e-Sports proposed by Seo (2013). Nowadays, e-Sports consumption is not confined to the virtual game space, co-creation values should be emphasized in marketing events. Corporate crowdfunding is a good example of such practice, which can enrich players’ experiences and promote their devotion to the game. In this case, players, game developer, professional gamers, and various online platforms were all employed as marketing factors that contribute to the success of the crowdfunding campaign.