2. Crowd-Based Digital Business Models

The chapter presents an in-depth discussion of the value creation in the platform-based businesses of the Web, including crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, and peer-to-peer (P2P) online lending market. Moreover, solution concepts that resolve potential issues of trust and fear, mainly in crowdfunding and P2P online lending, will be presented. Through intriguing facts, up-to-date data on the existing platforms, and illustrative examples, the chapter will help you understand the current state of the art. This is to equip the reader with the techniques on how to effectively participate in crowd-based businesses as a digital entrepreneur or investor. The chapter is organized as follows. The first section focuses on crowdfunding, examining the crowdfunding models, underlying problems, proposed solutions, and the implication for crowdfunding. The second section looks at the crowdsourcing market, highlighting the value creation process between the crowd community and requesters. The third section dives into the P2P online lending market with a detailed discussion on the value co-creation in P2P lending and the underlying problems and a distributed reputation mechanism for P2P online lending. We will discuss some of the business models at the core of the digital economic system, ranging from crowdfunding to P2P online lending markets.