Case study: factors that influence the success or failure of Kickstarter Projects campaigns
Embedded Files
Scenario
Scenario
A startup company wants to test the validity of a product using Kickstarter campaigns.
Analysis Tools
Analysis Tools
For analysis and visualization purposes, I used SQL and EXCEL in this project.
Ask
Ask
Business task
Determine important elements contributing to Kickstarter Projects campaign success/failures and inform product launch decisions.
Business questions:
· What types of projects are most likely to succeed?
· Which projects are likely to fail?
Key stakeholders
· Startup board
· Startup investors/shareholders
· Marketing team
· Marketing mangers/director
Prepare
Prepare
· The data set used in this case study can be found here.
· This data was made available by Mickaël Mouillé of the Kaggle community.
· It is a public dataset.
· Its license number is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
· The data was updated 7 years ago
· The data consists of 1 table: ksprojects.
· The table contains 15 columns: ID, name, category, main_category, currency, deadline, goal, launched, pledged, state, backers, country, usd_pledged, usd_pledged_real, usd_goal_real
· The data date range is from 03/05/2009 to 03/03/2018
· The data is reliable, original, comprehensive, current, and cited.
· The data contains null values. (usd_pledged and Name columns)
· Changed data types of columns 11,12 and 13 from float to number
· Changed data types of columns 10 from numeric to text
· Removed the null values from : Name column: 4 null values, and usd_pledged : 3797 null values
· Removed duplicate values from:
· The column ID: 2693 duplicate values
· The column name: 2787 duplicate values
Process
Process
Column names and data types:
ID: float, name: nvarchar, category: nvarchar, main_category: nvarchar, currency: nvarchar, deadline: datetime2, goal: float, launched: datetime2, pledged: float, state: nvarchar, backers: float, country: nvarchar, usd_pledged: float, usd_pledged_real: float, usd_goal_real: float
· Total successful projects are 133851.
· Total unsuccessful projects are 241009.
Analyze
Analyze
Total projects
The highest number of projects in total is in Film & Video, Music and Publishing with percentages of 16.73%, 13.21% and 10.50% respectively.
The lowest number of projects in total is in Crafts, Journalism and Dance Publishing with percentages of 2.35%, 1.27% and 1.00% respectively.
In general, the percentage of successful projects on the website is 36% compared to 74% of unsuccessful ones.
Total successful projects in each category:
The highest number of successful projects is in the music category with around 18% of the total number of successful projects.
Second, third and fourth come film &video, games and publishing with 17.64%, 9.35% and 9.19% of the total number of successful projects respectively.
The lowest number of successful projects is in the journalism category with a percentage of 0.76%.
Total unsuccessful projects in each category:
The highest number of unsuccessful projects is in Film & Video, Publishing, Technology and Music categories with a percentage of around 16%, 11%, 10.8% and 10.5% respectively.
The lowest number of unsuccessful projects is in journalism and dance with a percentage of 1.55% and 0.59% respectively.
Determining if the amount of money set as a goal reached for each category:
The highest percentage of the amount of money pledged as a goal reached is in design, games and dance categories with a percentage of around 58%, 74% and 36% respectively.
The lowest percentage of the amount of money pledged as a goal reached is in Art, Film & Video and Journalism categories with a percentage of around 8%, 7% and 3% respectively.
Determining the number of backers for each category:
The highest backed projects percentage is in Games, Design and Technology categories with a percentage of around 28%, 18% and 13% respectively.
The lowest backed projects percentage is in Crafts, Journalism and Dance categories with a percentage of 0.6%, 0.46% and 0.40% respectively.
Total successful projects per country:
The highest percentage of successful projects is in the US with 82% of total successful projects.
Britain, Canada and Australia constitute 9%, 3% and 2% respectively of the total successful projects.
Total successful projects per currency
The USD is the highest used currency in successful projects with 81.66%, followed by GBP: 9.02% of total currencies used on the website.
The JPY is the least used currency on the website: 0.01% of total currencies.
Top 10 projects in all categories:
The projects that exceeded the goal achieved percentages the most are VULFPECK /// The Beautiful Game, Re-covering with Friends, and VULFPECK /// Thrill of the Arts.
Top 10 projects in each category with funding status:
The most backed projects of the top projects per category are Fidget Cube: A Vinyl Desk Toy, The World's Best TRAVEL JACKET with 15 Features || BAUBAX and ADV3NTURE HOODIE with 23 Pockets and Features!
Top 10 unsuccessful projects in each category:
All failing projects in every category were not nearly funded (SUM(usd_pledged_real) / SUM(usd goal_real)<0.75)
Top 10 backed projects
The most backed projects in general are Exploding Kittens, Fidget Cube: A Vinyl Desk Toy and Bring Reading Rainbow Back for Every Child, Everywhere!
Top 10 failed projects per category where funding was supposed to be more than 20000 $ and backers more than 100
Only two projects were ‘fully funded’ in that category: From Neurons to Nirvana: The Great Medicines, and "Balance".
The most backed project was STARFIGHTER INC. with 5389 backers and the least was DreemBee - Sweet Dreams with 101 backers.
C. The highest set goal was 50000$ for BE PART OF A HIGHLAND TARTAN UPRISING - BUILD THE MILL project, while the lowest was 21000$ for Imperium Watches - Affordable High Quality Watches project.
Act
Act
Upon examining the data, one can find that:
The total number of successful projects on the website is less than the total number of unsuccessful ones: 36% and 74%, which signifies the risk entailed in backing or investing in the projects in general; however, some projects can be less risky than other based on factors such as category, number of backers, amount pledged…. etc.
The highest number of projects per category is in Film & Video, Music, and Publishing, so it is more likely to find most successful/unsuccessful projects in these categories unlike Crafts, Journalism, and Dance which has the lowest number of projects.
Initially, it seems that Music, film & video and games are the safest categories in general to invest in since they pose the highest number of successful projects, unlike photography, dance, Crafts and Journalism which have the least number of successful projects.
With Film & Video and Music, it’s a mixed bag issue as they have also some of the highest numbers of unsuccessful projects with film and video coming first and music fourth in that category.
It is relatively safer to back a project in the games category since it comes third in the category of successful projects, but also fifth in the category of unsuccessful ones.
Moreover, Publishing and Technology constitute the second and third places in the unsuccessful projects, with a project more likely to fail if belonging to them.
Journalism proves to be a failing bet since it has one of the lowest number of projects in general with the lowest percentage of success as well.
Goal achievement is another important factor in determining which project to back; Design, Games, Dance, Comics, Photography and Fashion make the topmost projects in that category. It’s worth noting that the games category comes second here with a percentage of around 47%.
Although film & video has a high level of successful projects, it is one of the least categories in goal achieving.
Journalism continues to perform badly on many levels as it is also the least goal achieving category of all.
Music, however, is in the middle position of the goal achieving category classification.
If you are looking to pay relatively less, then look into the number of backers for each category; one good option here is games which is the most backed category, followed by Design, Technology, Film & Video and Music.
Journalism continues to disappoint here as well, being one of the least backed categories with Crafts, and Dance
Another determining factor is the county where a project is done. The smartest option here is backing a project in the USA which dominates this classification with around 82% of successful projects. Britain, Canada and Australia are safe options as well but a lot less safe than the US, constituting only 9%, 3% and 2% of successful projects.
The same goes of course for the USD which is the best performing currency on the website. So, backing a project that will be done in the US and paying in USD will generally be worthwhile.
Surprisingly, of the top 10 projects of all categories according to goal achievement percentage, music is the category that has the biggest share in this classification with around 60% of the total number, followed by games: 22%. The rest goes to Art, Publishing, and Technology. So, games and music continue to pop up as relatively good and safe backing options.
Furthermore, 6 out of the overall most backed projects are ‘games’ projects; the rest are in Design, Technology and Film & Video categories.
It is worth noting that in the unsuccessful projects where backers>100 and the amount Pledged>20000 $, only crafts and dance have the least number of projects.
Taking all the above into consideration:
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