Using crowdfunding for extracting feedback: literature review

During the last few years, crowdfunding has grown in importance as an alternative source of finance for various types of purposes. It has quickly evolved into a commonly used tool to help entrepreneurs getting products developed, and furthermore, is a way for innovative, small organizations to access capital since the financial crisis. However, only very recently, it has been noticed that the significant value of crowdfunding lies in its ability to enable learning from crowdfunding backers and receive useful and interesting feedback from them in various manners. The purpose of the study was to review and better understand the various business-related novel and rapid means of crowdfunding to provide useful information and feedback. To our knowledge, no earlier systematic literature reviews have been carried out on this topic. To study the topic, we carried out a literature review on empirical academic journal articles on crowdfunding between 2005--2016, making use of Fink's [6, 7] process model of systematic literature review. On the basis of our review, we can state that crowdfunding is a very interesting and useful approach as a feedback channel for various types of business organizations. Even though feedback was not commonly the main goal in crowdfunding campaigns, it was noted to be very important outcome in the reviewed articles. Managerially, this study enables for instance start-ups, entrepreneurs and managers to evaluate the usefulness of crowdfunding as a means for gaining various types of feedback, new information and knowledge.