85% of the 2014 world’s most valuable brands have used crowdsourcing users in the last ten years to inno¬vate and market their products (eYeka, 2015). The deployment of interactive online innovation communities (mystarbucksidea.com, Ideas4Unilever, P&G’s Connect+Develop), open-source toolkits and companies specialized in crowd creativity (Hyve, InnoCentive, etc.) are both the expression of co-creation extension practices.
Co-creation practices are very beneficial both for the firms and users contributors (Hoyer et al., 2010; Ramaswamy and Gouillart, 2010). Nevertheless, these initiatives are not without limits (the “dark side” of co-creation). Interacting with consumers and getting creativity directly from them at various stages of the marketing process can be risky. More precisely, co-creation may “create frustration and evoke angry reactions” due to disappointing experiences (Gebauer et al., 2013). While participating to co-creation contests (even if it is based on free participation) is time-consuming and requires cognitive efforts, only few co-creators (the winners) are rewarded for their engagement and their outcomes produced.
How to manage “losers” co-creators? Which emotions do they feel? Is there any impact of such experience on behavioral intentions toward the platform, on emotional attachment toward the brand, brand-satisfaction, loyalty and brand-trust?
This research aims to address the consequences towards the crowdsourcing platform and also the brand when contributor’s submissions are rejected. This project is a multi-studies research (one study has been already completed and two others studies are in progress).
Study 1 (completed)
A first qualitative study with 15 subjects was conducted on January 2016. The goal of the study is to understand both emotions felt by participants after they have lost a creative contest and the impacts on their behavioral intentions. We collected data using semi-structured interviews and transcribed each (the interviews lasted from 15 to 30 minutes). The respondents were nonprofessional of creative fields (students and amateurs) who join a creative competition, on a global online market leader in creative crowdsourcing platform, for an unrevealed French cosmetics brand.
Each informants were questioned on specific themes such as 1/ their submission, 2/ the way they were informed about the non-selection of their submission, 3/ feelings and behavioral intentions after the announcement of the results and, finally, 4/ the solutions proposed by the respondents to counteract those negative feelings. We analyzed informants’ responses with Nvivo 11 software.
Three main feelings emerged from the data: deception, frustration and perceived injustice: “we had the impression not be understood”, “disappointment because we did not know how we were evaluated, what were the selection criteria”, “we found it was unfair”.
The informants declare not having any explanation on the reason of the loss. The expressions “lack of precisions”, “I see it as too insubstantial, “need to be more personalized” were mentioned among others.
Moreover, the fact of not revealing the brand name has been often negatively perceived by the respondents: “We wondered why the brand name was hidden… It could be better to have it in order (…) to propose solutions adapted to their targets.” However no negative feeling towards the brand were reported. It is probably due to the intermediary role of the online platform which seems to be a catalyst. Nevertheless, a large fraction of respondents indicates they would like the brand interacts more with them. Towards the platform, feelings are mitigated. Whereas five respondents do not report negative feelings, others do not understand the reject (“the feeling to be misunderstood”), lose trust into the platform (“a lack of trust right now”) and feel annoyed by the result (“almost annoyed indeed”).
Concerning the behavioral intentions towards the platform, most of the interviewees mention they will certainly participate to other challenges even though they consider the fact of being in competition with professionals is unfair. One respondent only declares to make some negative word of mouth: “I could make some negative word of mouth if I have to talk about it with other people”.
According to the respondents , the brand should play a more important role in the feedbacks provided by explaining the reasons of the reject. In a similar vein, rewards should be provided to the losers “a financial reward, (…), a discount on an item” to reduce the disappointment. A classification of all the submitted projects from the winners to the losers could also be mentioned in the results provided by the platform to the participants or on the website.
Studies 2 (in progress)
Following the procedure of study 1, we are currently conducting a second qualitative study with the following change: informants are professionals and freelancers from the world of creation (such as graphic designers, copywriters, illustrators, etc.) who participate to crowdsourcing contests. In-depth interviews will reveal if significant differences exist between professional and non-professional co-creators in terms of emotions and behaviors.
Studies 3 (in progress)
A third study is going to be conducted to analyze the impact of the rejection of a submission on 1/ emotions, 2/ behavioral intentions, and 3/ contributors’ responses toward the brand engaged in the crowdsourcing activity (emotional attachment to the brand, brand satisfaction, brand loyalty, brand attitude, brand trust, and brand commitment). A longitudinal questionnaire survey will be conducted with participants of a crowdsourcing contest from one of the world’s largest sporting goods retailers The goal is to examine if differences are revealed and if these differences are maintained over time. Three data collections are planned: (1) before the submission to the challenge (May 2016), (2) after the results announcement (June 2016) and (3) few weeks after the announcement (July 2016).
Jouny-Rivier_and_Vellera_2016_Abstract-_OUI_Conference_Poster_Session.pdf 