Crowdfunding as an alternative investment opportunity in Germany

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,0, Northumbria University, language: English, abstract: Over the past ten years crowdfunding has emerged as an alternative investment form and a new way to raise funds. Project funders increasingly try to raise funds from a crowd through the internet. Therefore, the ¿crowd¿, also referred to as ¿backers¿ play the key role in a successful funding process.

The literature on crowdfunding examines the different crowdfunding types and their benefits for backers. The literature on the German culture and crowdfunding in Germany will be presented. Using a questionnaire, this study aims to identify benefits which motivate people living in Germany to invest in a particular crowdfunding type. Subsequently, the study evaluates the four main crowdfunding types and which motivate potential backers most to invest into crowdfunding based on the benefits they are offering. All participants of the questionnaire are German residents.

The analysis of the questionnaire¿s collected quantitative data reveals that the benefits people receive from the participation in rewards-based crowd-funding, such as receiving a final product before the official product launch and actively participating in the realisation of a crowdfunding project have a huge motivational impact on people to invest in crowdfunding. Moreover, the analysis from the gathered data showed that not receiving any benefits from participation in donation-based crowdfunding mostly discouraged the participants in this study. Thus, people living in Germany mostly expect benefits for investing their money. Moreover, the motivations vary within different age groups.

This study identifies limitations that occur using the chosen sampling method and closes with recommendations for further research.