What Do The 'Crowds' Say About Donation Distribution by Malaysian-based Charitable Crowdfunding?

Abstract

Purpose: The present study demonstrates the netnography technique to explore and understand crowds' perceptions on the donation distribution by charitable crowdfunding platform official social media, Facebook. Research design, data and methodology: This paper conducts a netnography design to examine the perceptions of online communities on four prominent charitable crowdfunding platforms' Facebook. A total of 93 comments are studied by collecting and analyzing their comments thematically. Results: This study illustrates two main themes which are 'Recommended Review' and 'Non-Recommended Review'. 'Recommended Review' can be explained into six sub-themes which are 'Role of Religion', 'Encouragement to Donate', 'Platform Reliability', 'Volunteering Value', 'Platform Support', and 'Donation Convenience'. While 'Non-Recommended Review' reveals that 'Rejected Donation Amounts', 'Rejection of Advertisements', and 'Review by Authorities'. Conclusion: Online community comments play an important role in providing input to the experience of donating through charitable crowdfunding. The crowdfunding platform can make a benchmark for the services offered. The comments are needed to be given attention by maintaining the interaction between the platform and donors to recruit new donors and maintain existing donors. This study provides better understanding on online community perception towards charitable crowdfunding platforms. This study also contributes the discussion on charitable crowdfunding and online marketing literatures.

1. Introduction

Crowdfunding is catching the attention of an increasing number of social and charity projects as an emerging financing technique. Crowdfunding is a convenient way for project creators to raise funds than traditional financing channels financing technique. Crowdfunding is a convenient way for project creators to raise funds than traditional financing channels (Wang & Yang, 2019). Others than debt-based/loan-based crowdfunding, equity-based crowdfunding, and reward-based crowdfunding, donation-based or charitable crowdfunding is also implied when funders donate to causes solely for the purpose of supporting them, with no expectation of receiving (material) remuneration (Salido-Andres et al., 2020). This will recruit donors from various regions to donate financially (Behl et al., 2021).

According to Khurana (2021), donations have traditionally been dominated by various well-structured organizations such as well-known charities, houses of worship, community organizations, and universities. This organization has its own mission and specific purpose established. Compared with traditional fundraising methods, charitable crowdfunding reaches out to a broader range of people for their donations. Crowdfunding, which arose from the social media tidal wave, is open to everyone who wants to raise money or to donate. Building crowdfunding sites to host donation-based initiatives and fund distribution is becoming increasingly popular among charitable groups (Zhang et al., 2020).

There are various charitable crowdfunding platforms in the world, such as JustGiving, GoFundMe, and DonorChoose. JustGiving, has successfully raised and distributed the donation over £5 billion for charitable activities. Whereas, according to Xiao and Yue (2021), the GoFundMe and DonorChoose platforms managed to raise more than $70 million from the public in a short period of time during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Malaysia, one of the biggest platforms is JomDonate. Until 2022, it is estimated that RM5 million in funds have been collected from 308 campaigns with a total of 243797 donors.

Donor retention, on the other hand, is the problem of maintaining engaged and interested donors so they may continue to make donations year after year (Xiao & Yue, 2021). As promoted by Behl et al. (2020), trust is considered a crucial element that explains the participation of people. In order to devise strategies for persuading more to give, the crowdfunding platform needs to provide the best service in an effort to give a good perception and gain trust among the crowd. As a result, the crowdfunding platform may create awareness and trust through social media. This will allow the ‘crowd’ to write positive or negative comments on the platform (Zhang et al., 2020). Sasaki (2019) argued that when a significant number of multiple contributors have donated the same amount in such huge numbers, sharing information about them could have a stronger influence on potential donors than when they have not.

Nevertheless, ‘crowd’ perception has been under-recognized, partly because it seems unclear and has only been loosely linked to other managerial and marketing methods and approaches. Moreover, little attention is paid to the charitable crowdfunding’s Facebook reviews, as suggested by Liu et al. (2018) who said that Facebook is the most effective technique for increasing donation rates. In addition, it is predicted that there will be 24.67 million Facebook users in Malaysia by 2021 (Müller, 2022). This demonstrates how the use of Facebook may draw users in and raise donations by a significant margin. To close this gap, the present study proposes and demonstrates the netnography technique to explore and understand their crowds’ perceptions. Our findings can help crowd funders come up with better ways to provide a user-friendly donation platform to potential donors as well as marketing strategies to attract more contributors in the future. By using netnography method, crowdfunders can identify the crowd's behavior and perceptions of their platform in an effort to enhance the efficacy of their campaigns and donation services. Moreover, the interaction between the platform and the crowd may publicly persuade potential new funders. This research also enhances the existing crowdfunding literature and broadens the scope of online crowdfunding platform application reviews.

2. Literature Review

Social media plays an important role for entrepreneurs, such as Facebook, which is used by many users around the world (Bacaksiz et al., 2020; Jin, 2018). Through social media, if a user is satisfied with the product or service offered, they will voluntarily market that organization. They interact to show emotions and obligations by the feeling that they need to give feedback to the organization through social media (Pongpaew et al., 2017). This can also show their loyalty to the benefits offered by the organization (Hu et al., 2017).

Facebook has certain crucial qualities, including dominance, effectiveness, receptiveness, and versatility, which set it apart from other social media platforms. These qualities respond to the needs of many advertisers (Boerman et al., 2017; Nuseir & AlShawabkeh, 2019). In addition, Facebook is unique in that it not only links people with one another, but also with businesses, brands, and organizations; and it provides an interactive platform for sharing information, receiving updates, and receiving feedback and reviews (Waller & Waller, 2019). Using Facebook for digital marketing is beneficial to the company and provides more cost-effective platform to convert money spent into valuable trading outcomes (Dolega et al., 2021). For example, depending on a Facebook algorithm, a paid post can reach more users. This can increase engagement of the existence of a product or service (Barreto & Ramalho, 2019). As suggested by Fink et al. (2020) and Jin (2018), strengthening the image of the sponsor's brand could increase the celebrity endorser credibility which purchase intention among members of the sponsored Facebook fan network.

The production of advertisements through Facebook needs to take account into cultural differences within a country in order to produce an effective marketing strategy. Therefore, there is a possibility that different cultural backgrounds create a way of understanding the message in an advertisement differently (Abuhashesh et al., 2021). At the same time, marketers need to identify the right audience and choose the appropriate marketing method. Such an example, countries with a high level of individualism show an interest in advertisements on Facebook that benefit them (Van den Broeck et al., 2018).

Social interaction and relationship-building through information exchange can provide value to Facebook users. Therefore, ad owners need to join the discussion on Facebook by sharing various ad formats such as videos, photos, games, polls, and blogs. This can give a high engagement to the advertisement that is being launched (Boerman et al., 2017; Wiese et al., 2020). According to Haji and Stock (2021), production of attractive advertisements can contribute to customer loyalty and trust. Additionally, to organically promote content on Facebook using a web-link, placing them in the comments would be more effective for businesses to achieve their desired goals, compared to placing the web-link in the caption (Chawla & Chodak, 2021).

The content of Facebook also helps to achieve a higher level of customer engagement (Sitta et al., 2018). Van den Broeck et al. (2018) argued that marketers need to identify target Facebook users that are suitable for the content produced. For example, by attaching videos will help to inform and encourage customers to share posts and provide comments. Content that includes video also can convey complicated information in the most understandable form (Wang & Breda, 2021). Lee et al. (2018) stated that informative content needs to be combined with brand personality to balance the reach and engagement of Facebook users. Postings about advertisements and commercials can influence user behaviour to like, comment on, or share the relevant post for other people to see (Kim et al., 2019). At the same time, Peruta and Shields (2018) suggested that strategic timing is also indeed very important in getting engagement from social media surfers, whether on non-working days or after working hours.

According to Klassen et al. (2018), the push strategy based on positive emotions generates more Facebook interactions. Emotions play a role in attracting attention and attracting users to a ‘post’. Users who have positive emotions when they see a post on social media are more likely to engage with them than users who do not.

Kawaf and Istanbulluoglu (2019) found that customers do not share their fashion products on Facebook, even though most shopping sites let them easily share their attires with acquaintance and network. This study demonstrates that customers need to retain their exclusivity in fashion preferences. It perhaps deals with this exclusivity by making a fashion choice less distinctive.

Facebook also allows users to comment on services and products that being offered through comments. According to Salleh (2018) and Yang et al. (2019), comments shared by users can help other users decide on whether to get the service or product offered. Recommendations through Facebook comments provide information on the quality of the service offered and the user's experience while getting the service (A Rahim et al., 2021). Touni et al. (2020) argued the value of presenting customers with a brand experience of products or services, and allowing them to communicate their positive experiences with other prospective customers. Staff should regularly analyse feedback to track of possible concerns areas and problems in regards to their online activity, and social media should be seen as a vital method of a two-way communication rather than just one-way communication. Management should also respond to visitor complaints in a courteous manner and allow institutional members to rectify mistakes, while keeping in mind that nothing stated escalates the situation (Waller & Waller, 2019).

3. Research Methods and Materials

3.1. Research Design

Netnography adapts ethnographic methods to study the cultures and communities that are emerging through internet communications (Kozinets, 2002). Through this approach, researchers commonly have access to enormous amounts of data, which provide an unprecedented amount of information on particular phenomena (Heinonen & Medberg, 2018; Kozinets et al., 2014). Gholamhosseinzadeh et al. (2021) and Sandlin (2007) proposed that marketing researchers could apply this method to explore and understand better about the internet-based communities. It also enables the researchers to gain customers’ communications, perceptions, opinions, and motivations on certain products or services, or issues (Ashman et al., 2021; Atsız et al., 2022; Eaton & Pasquini, 2020; Mehta et al., 2020; Zhao et al., 2020). Thus, this study argues that this method is a helpful tool in understanding the crowds’ perceptions about charitable crowdfunding. In order to conduct this research, the unit of analysis is Facebook reviews for the selected crowdfunding campaign official Facebook pages will be reviewed

3.2. Research Design

Before conducting the research, the researcher needs to identify the official website’s entrée that needed to be studied (Del Vecchio et al., 2020). Google.com was utilised to search for charitable crowdfunding in Malaysia as a unit of study using the keywords 'Charitable crowdfunding' and 'Malaysia'. Through this search, the researchers found four charitable crowdfunding sites situated in Malaysia. Based on their respective official websites, researchers were able to identify the official Facebook and investigate their Facebook reviews. Then, as suggested by Lizzo and Liechty (2020), each researcher collected the reviews text word for word and the emoticons separately for the Facebook review. Then, they compared the reviews among researchers to avoid any neglected data. Data was copied from these pages and pasted in Microsoft Word as proposed by Kozinets (2002). Then, the file was imported to Atlas.ti version 9 for further analysis. Most of the comments were in Malay. Hence, the Malay comments in this study was translated into English and verified by two language experts to ensure consistency of the comments.

3.3. Data Analysis

This research uploaded all the data into a qualitative software package, Atlas.ti Version 9, and analysed the data using thematic analysis. Thematic analysis is considered suitable and flexible for researchers who seek to understand the perceptions of participants regarding a particular topic (Finkelstein et al., 2021; Xharavina et al., 2020). Each researcher independently analysed respondents’ comments to identify common themes and formed content areas that captured them. Then, they double-checked and reviewed each other's codes and themes until they came to an agreement (Ohta et al., 2020). A third independent coder then confirmed the themes by recoding all responses using the composite list of themes for each question (Roberson & Perry, 2021). A thematic map was created to show how the data patterns and their linkages are conceptualised holistically (Wilson et al., 2021).

4. Findings

The present study aims to explore users’ perceptions based on the crowdfunding platform’s Facebook review. There are four main crowdfunding platforms that are chosen in this study, as shown in Table I. This crowdfunding platform has launched campaigns for humanitarian assistance, medicine, education, volunteering, and the eradication of poverty, particularly in Malaysia, Southeast Asia, and troubled countries. The most reviews are on Platform B (66) and the least are on Platform A (4). The highest rating is 5.0, and the lowest is 4.1. Platform B has the highest number of reviewers (79), and Platform C has the lowest number of reviewers (6). This study reveals two main themes in this study, which are ‘Recommended Review’ and ‘Non-Recommended Review’.

Table 1: Platforms Profile

4.1. Theme 1: Recommended Review

This theme is available from all four social media that suggested in this platform. The comments supporting this platform are divided into six sub-themes namely ‘Role of Religion’, ‘Encouragement to Donate’, ‘Platform Reliability’, ‘Volunteering Value’, ‘Platform Support’ and ‘Convenience Donation’.

4.1.1. Role of Religion

The ‘role of religion’ refers to comments given in relation to religion, either in the form of a reward in the afterlife or in relation to divinity. This theme is only found on Platform A, B, and C. This study found that Platform B has the most comments related to the role of religion in the comments on the platform's Facebook, which is as many as six comments, while Platform A only has one comment. As shown in Table II, among the highest reviews are ‘The easier way to get rewarded’ and ‘Hereafter’s stocks’, which are three reviews for each platform. The role of this religion can also be shown in the form of comments: ‘The way to heaven and be blessed’, ‘God helps the donor’, ‘Life is blessed’, ‘Hereafter’s stock’, ‘The easier way to get rewarded’ and ‘Worship accepted by Allah’.

Table 2: Distribution of 'Role of Religion' comments

The following are some of the responses:

“An easy way to get a lot of rewards” (A1)

“This will be our stairways to heaven Insha Allah” (B1)

“Let's help those in need together. Insha Allah, God will help us” (B2)

“So that our acts of worship are accepted by Allah SWT.” (C1)

“Spending on the 'shares' of the hereafter. Trusted foundation.” (C2)

4.1.2. Encouragement to Donate

This sub-theme can be understood as an encouragement by reviewers to crowdfunding platform social media browsers to donate on the platform. In general, this sub-theme can be explained through ‘Helping the community’, ‘Hope for continuous helping’ and ‘Returns in the future’. Table III displays the distribution of the ‘Encouragement to Donate’ comments.

Table 3: Distribution of ‘Encouragement to Donate’ comments

‘Helping the community’ is the highest comment with 24 comments (21: Platform B and 3: Platform C). This comment refers to reviewers who encourage surfers to contribute funds through these platforms. The collected funds can help people in need, affected income, ease health problems, and ease the burden. There was even a comment that asserted that people should not just look at the hardships of others without offering help. At the same time, there is a comment that encourages surfers to donate to the Muslim community in Palestine. This shows that crowdfunding platforms care about the welfare of the community.

There is one comment that hopes to continue assisting on platform B. This shows that there are donors who will continue to donate through the crowdfunding platform. Therefore, crowdfunding platforms need to continue to launch quality campaigns to attract the interest of existing and new donors. Whereas 'Encouragement to Donate' can happen in the form of a return in the future. There are comments that encourage people to donate if the donation is a reason that the giver will receive help in the future.

Some of the comments for this sub-theme are as follows:

“This page is highly recommended. Let's do our best to help.” (B3)

“Hope can help more people.” (B4)

“There are many small children and chronic patients who need funds from us. Let's help them.” (B5)

“Together we help and donate every bit of our wealth to those in need.” (C3)

4.1.3. Platform Reliability

‘Platform Reliability’ can be described as a term that refers to donors trusting the crowdfunding platform as a platform that responsible for helping those in need. This subtheme consists of ‘Committed to help’, ‘Updated information’, ‘Transparency of information’, and ‘Verification’ as shown in Table 4.

Table 4: Distribution of 'Platform Reliability' comments

A total of six comments showed that the crowdfunding platform is reliable refer to ‘Committed to help’ sub-theme. The comments further elaborate on the commitment to share sustenance with the one who needs and perform sacrificial worship. This is because the campaigns are updated on the platform's website. ‘Updated information’ was agreed upon through three comments. These reviews show that this platform shares the latest information with the public. This will simultaneously increase confidence in the donation given.

In addition, three comments on ‘Transparency of information’ refer to the amount of donations that have been collected and have been distributed to the initiators. This is displayed on the platform's website. Therefore, donors will feel safe and there will be no fraud against the funds that have been collected. Furthermore, ‘Verification’ will be made by the platform against the initiators and the campaigns that will be launched. This can prevent beginners who falsify their identity and fund requirement information.

Some of the comments given by commentators are as follows:

“How did you know your donation went to the right place? It (crowdfunding platform) will take up the verification role so you can have peace of mind and confidence to make the donations. " (A2)

“This page really helps to tell the public about the funds and help that they need. It's also really trusted. Let's help each other.” (B6)

“A very good platform which has updates of programs, projects, and useful information for the community. trusted NGO and highly recommended for all.” (D1)

“I really trust NGO (crowdfunding platform) because they are always committed to giving help to others and they keep posting their activities, so there's no need to worry about my donation going missing.” (D2)

4.1.4. Volunteering Value

The ‘Volunteering Value’ was only shown on Platform D through 3 comments. This is because platform D not only offers help in the form of funds; the platform also offers volunteer activities. Platform D provides moral values and enthusiasm to young people through volunteering activities that are available at home and abroad. This shows that Platform D strongly supports youth development. The activities that had been carried out can increase knowledge and, at the same time, serve the community.

Below are the comments that have been given:

“Build value of Islam through this NGO, through volunteerism,” (D3)

“NGO that is trusted and very supportive of youth development. I have been a volunteer since the beginning of the establishment of this foundation, Alhamdulillah I have gained a lot of knowledge that I can give back to the community.” (D4)

4.1.5. Platform Support

Platform Support’ is described as ‘Continued success’, ‘Continuation of help’, ‘Charity work ideas’ and ‘Management’. Table V shows the distribution of comments on the official Facebook crowdfunding platform.

Table 5: Distribution of 'Platform Support' comments

The comment ‘Continued success’ is supported by six comments. This is because this platform has done a good job in aiding. This matter is also supported by two comments related to 'Continuation of help' which is an encouragement to the platform to continue to provide the best service to those in need, especially financial assistance for medicine.

Helping the one in needs also shows the ‘Charity work ideas’. This shows the idea of collecting funds from the public online for the purpose of helping those in need. In fact, the ‘Management’ of funds by this platform was reviewed by a reviewer who stated that he was a beginner. The startup raised funds quickly after the campaign had been launched and got more than enough help.

Here are some of the comments found on the social media platform:

“Awesome. Keep up the good work. A friend in need is a friend indeed. This means that a friend who helps you when you really need help is a true friend.” (A3)

“May it serve the community that needs it.” (B7)

“This is a good platform to do charitable work. Well done guys great job.” (B8)

“Good initiative. keep it up.” (B9)

“This is a good platform to do charitable work. Well done guys’ great job.” (B10)

“The effort to support the people in need, the transparency. TOP!” (B11)

4.1.6. Donation Convenience

‘Donation Convenience’ can be described as ‘Online donation’, ‘Mobility constraints’, and ‘Fingertips’. Table VI shows that 'Online donation' is the highest comment, which refers to donation activities that can be carried out easily when done online. This is supported by two commentators who think that donations can now be made at any time and place. This is because there are donors who are unable to donate traditionally due to the mobility restrictions.

Table 6: Distribution of ‘Donation Convenience’ comments​​​​​​​

Some of the comments made include are:

“Easy to donate. Feels bad I can't donate more but I hope it still can help them.” (B12)

“Good job. Easy way to donate.” (B13)

“One of the easiest platforms to donate for some people who rarely leave the house and want to donate." (B14)

4.2. Theme 2: Non-Recommended Review

This theme was found from Platform D social media which shows that users do not recommend this platform. The comments that were found were divided into three themes, namely 'Rejected Donation Amounts', 'Rejection of Advertisements' and 'Review by Authorities'.

4.2.1. Rejected Donation Amounts

There is a review on platform D from a user who shows that the desired amount of donation is not the same as the amount of donation deducted from the account. The amount of the deduction is huge. At the same time, the user suggested that the service and payment system of this platform should be improved.

4.2.2. Rejection of Advertisements

A review was displayed that showed advertisements were launched undesirably on the user's social media. Hence, the user did not give a good review. In fact, t he comment contains elements of insulting Islam. It is possible that the platform launches FBads, but the co mmenter is not the target donor.

4.2.3. Review by Authorities

There are comments from users on Platform D's Facebook who questioned the actions of Platform D, which campaigns abroad, such as in Syria, Palestine, Japan, and Africa. The commentator is also of the view that the aid provided encourages laziness and easy methods of obtaining funds. Commentators also suggested that this platform provides assistance to the Muslim community in Sabah and the indigenous people in Peninsular Malaysia. Therefore, the commentator asked the authorities to conduct an audit of the platform.

5. Theoretical Implications

This study has several theoretical implications. First, different from most literature on crowdfunding that is interested in identifying factors that contribute to campaign success, this study contributes to the understanding of the online community's opinions on charitable crowdfunding. By examining users' reviews on official crowdfunding platforms, this study reveals that a ‘Recommended Review’ platform is explained as the importance of religion in donating, encouragement to donate, trustworthiness of the platform, value of volunteering, support for the platform, and ease of donating. A ‘Non-Recommended Review’ is described as the amount of rejected donations exceeding the desired amount, inappropriate advertisements, and the need for review by the authorities.

Second, the findings contribute to the advertising literature in general, but more specifically on social media advertising, by providing more information about the views of the online community via the charitable crowdfunding platform's official social media. This research can assist the charitable crowdfunding party in identifying current needs for improving the services provided. This can have an impact on positive reviews in influencing potential and retention donors.

6. Practical Implications

This study argues that comments on social media play an important role in providing input on user experience when donating on a platform (Rahim et al., 2021). Religious comments are seen able to encourage people to donate as evidenced by Bukhari et al. (2019) and Kasri and Indriani (2021). Therefore, an understanding of the donor's religiosity can provide relevant methods to the platform to develop strategies and techniques in encouraging people to donate. Furthermore, the role of religion is important to influence the behavior and attitude of an individual (Suparno, 2020).

Encouragement to donate driven by donors who have experience donating through crowdfunding platforms is essential to retain existing donors and recruit a new one. As proposed by Zhou (2019), this encouragement to donate can be promoted through emotional support for donors. This study also suggests that crowdfunding platforms offer returns in the form of appreciation cards and tax exemption facilities (Cason & Zubrickas, 2019; Rijanto, 2018; Xiao & Yue, 2021). To organically promote campaigns on FB using a web-link, crowdfunding platforms should place the web-link in the comments as it would be more effective to reach their desired goals, compared to placing the web-link in the caption (Chawla & Chodak, 2021).

As discussed by Reddick and Ponomariov (2013), crowdfunding platforms can also promote volunteerism along with donation activities. Thus, the crowdfunding platform should communicate with volunteers to enhance their level of satisfaction, which enables them to perform tasks effectively. Importantly, charitable crowdfunding must recognise that designed rewards for volunteering will lead to improved retention among them (Hopkins & Dowell, 2022). Yeh et al. (2019) stated that volunteers may share news about innovations or volunteer activities through charitable crowdfunding with friends or family because they will understand the project's vision and mission and wish it to succeed.

A user's trust towards a crowdfunding platform as a social information system concerns the trustworthiness of other donors and donees as well as the authenticity of project content. This study reinforces the findings where Zhang et al. (2020) suggested that charitable crowdfunding platforms must pay close attention to the content they put on their websites. They need to make sure that the project details donors care about are highlighted in the description, and the information provided is accurate and complete. Charitable crowdfunding platforms may make more efforts to showcase their projects with pictures and videos, as well as testimonies from credible individuals or organizations. Also, charitable crowdfunding platforms must make sure that they update the information in a regular and timely manner.

In crowdfunding platform, existing online payment systems are adopted to facilitate transactions between initiators and potential funders. In order to transfer money to crowdfunding projects (initiators and potential funders are geographically isolated), users of social media are able to pay through their e-banking system, which is more convenient than visiting a physical bank (Liu et al., 2018). Charitable crowdfunding platforms should emphasise more on the privacy and security of their online platforms. The exposure risk for online platforms should be minimised by enhancing the security of virtual transactions (Mohd Thas Thaker, 2018).

Additionally, comments on social media can be used as a benchmark for a service offered by a crowdfunding platform. The crowdfunding platform needs to actively respond to the comments of the online community through their official page in order to attract the public's interest in knowing the latest developments in the crowdfunding platform's activities. According to Barreto and Ramalho (2019), Hinson et al. (2019) and Shawky et al. (2019), a good relationship between the platform and internet surfers will build their trust and confidence in the platform.

Due to the crowdfunding platform unable to prevent the behavior of surfers and the things commented on Facebook, so the platform has to take the complaints and negative comments given into account. The platform can take appropriate steps to respond to those comments because according to Yang et al. (2019), this step can attract more donors than positive comments. For example, comments related to the amount of donations being rejected is more than desired, thus the platform needs to update the payment method to prevent this from happening.

The crowdfunding party can use the trend of comments on social media to improve the quality of services, such as offering quality campaigns and attracting the interest of donors. The platform needs to share campaigns by including informational and emotional elements to attract donors. At the same time, transparent information needs to continue to be displayed in order to respond to the need for ‘Review by authorities’ (Paschen, 2017). The platform party needs to display information on the amount found and the amount channelled to the starters for each stage (Ba et al., 2020; Kamaruddin & Ishak, 2020). This simultaneously increases public confidence in the crowdfunding platform and improves the reputation of the platform.

7. Conclusion and Limitation

This study contributes to the understanding of social media marketing activities through the analysis of browser comments on the official Facebook page’s crowdfunding platform. Through the method of netnography, the comments of internet surfers were analysed to identify their comments on the official Facebook crowdfunding platform. This study divides the theme into two, namely ‘Recommended Review’ and ‘Non-Recommended Review’. ‘Recommended Review’ can be explained through the role of religion in donating; encouragement to other donors to donate; trustworthiness of the crowdfunding platform; value of volunteering; support for the platform; and ease of donating. As for the ‘Non-Recommended Review’ happens due to the amount of donations being rejected exceeding the amount to be donated, the rejection of advertisements with religious elements, and the need for review by authorities. These reviews can be used as a guide for the platform to move forward by offering quality campaigns and transparent information such as donation distribution and activities.

There are two limitations to the study. First, this study examines four official Facebook donation-based crowdfunding in Malaysia. Future studies can be conducted on official Facebook donation-based crowdfunding that more global. The second is that this article only focuses on comments on Facebook, not including comments for each post on the official Facebook crowdfunding platform. Therefore, in the future, researchers for donation-based crowdfunding can analyse the comments of Facebook users to get a broader picture of the campaigns posted on the official Facebook crowdfunding platform.