Brown Bag Seminar with Daniel Zantedeschi

Title: How Strategic Crowdfunding Design Decisions And Financial Slack Affect Funding And Post-Funding Outcomes

Abstract: Recently, crowdfunding has become an alternative mechanism for financing new product development. However, most studies on crowdfunding have focused on the fundraising phase where they have explored strategies that can lead to successful funding. In this paper, we go beyond the fundraising stage by examining how these strategic funding decisions affect product shipment – a post-funding outcome. Based on the marketing-operations interface model, we conjecture that strategic crowdfunding campaign product design decision can impact both funding and post-funding outcomes. We show that these strategic decisions have differential effects on both phases (fundraising and post-funding) of crowdfunding. That is, decisions that positively impact funding success may negatively affect the time to shipment of crowdfunded products. Further, and contrary to speculations, we find that overfunding (a fundraising phase outcome) provides financial slack and is associated with lower delays in product shipment. Finally, we provide implications for these findings.
About the Speaker: Professor Zantedeschi is a quantitative modeler interested in the development and application of statistical methods to further the understanding of consumers’, investors’ and firms’ behavior and to improve business decision-making. Thus, his research is in the exciting, growing field of business analytics. He is primarily investigating the integration of Predictive and Prescriptive analytics by developing appropriate methodological and computational tools. Applications of his research are in several managerial functions such as web and customer analytics, social media analytics, advertising, and multi-channel attribution.

Schedule:

12.00 Joint Lunch (Complimentary sandwiches)

12.30-14.00 Presentation and discussion

Location:

WEV F 109-111, MTEC, ETH Zurich

Weinbergstrasse 56-58, 8092 Zürich