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OVERFUNDING IN CROWDFUNDING ON STARTNEXT AND KICKSTARTER PLATFORMS – ARE PRODUCT OFFERINGS MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN OTHER PROJECTS?

This study provides a first overview of the impact of offering a product besides other characteristics on project overfunding on two large platforms Startnext and Kickstarter based on 4,303 successfully overfunded European projects in the time between 2013 and 2015. In general, the level of overfunding in median equals to 10% on Startnext and 22% on Kickstarter, but varies to a high degree, depending on the industry category, as indicated by the mean of 55% on Startnext and 257% on Kickstarter. Results from regression analysis show that launching a product is significantly increasing the level of overfunding only for some categories of campaigns and in different ways on the two platforms. For Startnext and Kickstarter a comparably strong and medium effect of product offerings on the level of overfunding is only observable for projects from the Technology and Fashion category, respectively. Thus, the comparison reveals important differences which might be potentially interesting for investors, SMEs, founders and their advisors. Future research should focus on larger samples of successful and unsuccessful projects in order to provide more precise results.