Niklas Leicht

An empirical taxonomy of crowdsourcing intermediaries

Due to the recent popularity of crowdfunding, a broad magnitude of crowdfunding intermediaries has emerged, while research on crowdfunding intermediaries has been largely neglected. As a consequence, existing classifications of crowdfunding intermediaries are conceptual, lack theoretical grounding, and are not empirically validated. Thus, we develop an empirical taxonomy of crowdfunding intermediaries, which is grounded in the theories of two-sided markets and financial intermediation. Integrating these theories, we develop a crowdfunding intermediation model that we use as foundation for performing cluster analysis with data of 127 intermediaries. We identify three generic archetypes of crowdfunding intermediaries, which differ in their value proposition: Hedonism, Altruism, and For Profit. Our crowdfunding intermediation model and our empirical taxonomy improve our understanding of crowdfunding by showing how crowdfunding intermediaries manage financial intermediation and digitally transform exchange relations between capital-giving and seeking agents in two-sided online markets. For practice, our research may help characterize the crowdfunding industry.

Accessing Knowledge with a Game -- A Meta-analysis of Prediction Markets

Prediction markets illustrate a promising solution to aggregate distributed knowledge playfully. Prediction markets are speculative markets. They are created to aggregate knowledge, which is distributed among the participants in the prediction market. Prediction markets have also been labeled as game market, decision market or virtual stock. The purpose of this study is to summarize recent studies according to the categories basic functionality, design, real or play money, implementation, success factors, and fields of application.