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1Dr. Kavita Saxena is Associate Faculty at Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. She can be reached at imkavita@gmail.com
‘Mass collaboration is the future of competitive advantage in businesses. With a burgeoning middle-class population in India, the capital formation power of crowdsourcing can provide competitive edge to businesses that can use this tool for their advantage. As per Wikipedia, crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. Though it is an age-old concept, its application as a marketing tool is still in the stage of infancy in India (Wexler, 2011). But time is not far when it will become an alternative channel for various industries for sourcing the knowledge, expertise, time and resources of a predefined crowd. This research paper tries to explain the concept of crowdsourcing, types of crowdsourcing and its application in taking important marketing decisions. Reliance games, Frinto lay, Nirbhaya campaign, Hyundai and Zomato are some of the successful examples of crowdsourcing discussed in the paper. These examples will enable readers to comprehend and relate with it in an understandable manner. The paper also tries to reveal the flip side of crowdsourcing as a precautionary measure for marketers.
Crowdsourcing, Crowd funding, Crowd wisdom, Crowd Creation, Marketing Decisions
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