Threads of Success: New Empirical Generalizations from a Large Crowdsourcing Dataset
COM2 Level 4
Executive Classroom, COM2-04-02
ABSTRACT:
In this study, we undertake a comprehensive empirical audit of a pioneering crowdsourcing website, Threadless.com. Threadless.com solicits designs from a community of amateurs and independent professionals, sources feedback from the community on the submitted designs, and then retails selected designs. Our study examines a carefully collected, novel, large scale dataset of over 100 million ratings, from over 500,000 users, relating to over 150,000 designs, submitted by over 40,000 designers, on Threadless. We focus on two questions. First, what is the conventional wisdom relating to crowdsourcing success - what factors influence the selection of designs by Threadless? Second, does the conventional wisdom stand up to scrutiny - can these factors be predictably and systematically linked to commercial success? We find evidence of a substantive difference between the selection criteria of Threadless.com and the findings from our empirical analysis. We conclude by discussing the implications of these differences for designers and firms seeking to ride the crowdsourcing tide.
BIODATA:
Prof Mukherjee is a graduate of Cornell University, with a B.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (2003), and a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Marketing from the Johnson Graduate School of Management (2008, 2009). He is an expert in quantitative and computational marketing: his research develops and applies cutting-edge (empirical) methods to examine substantively important marketing phenomena. When, how, and why do consumers change? This question underlies Prof. Mukherjee's research. His doctoral dissertation, which led to a publication in the Journal of Marketing Research, developed novel structural econometric models of demand and competition to measure seasonality and the dynamic release timing game in posttheatrical movie demand. His research has since examined the impact of the macro-economy on consumers, firms, and financial markets. For example, in research that was the recipient of the best paper award (both overall, and in the marketing analytics track) at ANZMAC 2015, he studies the impact of macroeconomic growth on product attribute preferences, and thus on brand and product shares. In a related project, he examines the impact of the macroeconomic environment on the demand for Bollywood movies in India. And in another project, he examines if private label shares in 68 countries and 59 categories show signs of a global convergence. Last, in a new stream of research, he studies crowdsourcing, i.e. a mass collaboration between firms, designers, and consumers. Specifically, he examines a carefully collected, novel, large-scale dataset of over 150 million ratings, from over 500,000 users, on over 150,000 designs, from over 40,000 designers, relating to over 10 million transactions on Threadless.com.