Crowdfunding to Cannes: Evaluating the Wisdom of Crowdfunding Crowds in the Movie Market

Abstract

Crowdfunding has emerged over the last few years as a means for small business owners to raise money on the Internet by tapping the easily accessible crowd of potential funders. Campaigns have been very successful, in some cases raising millions of dollars. These extremely successful campaigns raise an important question: does crowdfunding support bringing high quality products to the market, and does it help them remain successful once they do reach the market? Research on crowdfunding has increased greatly in the past couple of years, but this is a gap that has not yet been filled. This research seeks to assess whether crowds on these platforms are making wise funding decisions by analyzing the funding of movies on crowdfunding platforms in terms of whether or not they won any awards. This measure of market performance will give us an indication of whether certain aspects of a crowdfunding campaign have an impact on an offering once it reaches the market.