Promoting crowdsourced new products: Competing co-contributor attractiveness, similarity, and persuasion knowledge processes

Abstract

Crowdsourcing has become an increasingly popular way for marketers to conceive of and design new products. Promoting these with “designed by consumers” claims has proven highly effective in boosting innovation appeal and market success. However, beyond the appeal of the perceived similarity between co-contributors and customers (Dahl et al., 2015), little is known about the effectiveness of different communication strategies for crowdsourced products. Central to the current investigation is the crucial creative strategy decision about whether to show the co-contributor in the advertisements and the persuasive role of the co-contributor's level of physical attractiveness. The use of attractive sources is highly prevalent in standard advertisements and is known to have reliable positive effects in persuading consumers (Mello et al., 2020). In contrast, our research suggests that showing attractive co-contributors in advertisements for crowdsourced products undermines their unique appeal and can even backfire. Through a series of qualitative and experimental studies, we found that this effect results from two mechanisms: (1) negative persuasion knowledge, where consumers question whether the attractive source is the genuine co-contributor, and (2) disruption of the similarity appeal that typically makes crowdsourced products well-received. These findings not only advance our understanding of the effectiveness of “designed by consumers” claims but also contribute significantly to the broader communication and persuasion literature. Importantly, our findings provide managers with actionable strategies for maximizing the commercial success of crowdsourced products.