Impact of national culture on contributors’ performance in brand co-creation: insights from a crowdsourcing platform

Supported by crowdsourcing platforms, companies are able to tap into a global pool of talented contributors, co-creating thereby truly geocentric brand strategies. Still, the question remains whether there are differences across countries in contributors’ willingness to participate in brand co-creation and their ability to create value for the brand. This is the gap our study intends to address. Considering the multidimensional nature of national culture, we employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on a sample of 789 contributors from 66 countries, who participated in brand co-creation on eYeka crowdsourcing platform. Our findings reveal that contributors’ performance is significantly influenced by their cultural background, distinguishing between countries where valuable contributors are likely to emerge. Additionally, by adopting a neo-configurational perspective, we embrace the complexity of contributors’ culture profiles and determine joint—rather than independent—influence of different cultural dimensions on their quantity- and quality-based performance in brand co-creation. In this way, our study contributes to brand management studies interested in the role of national culture in brand co-creation, while offering practical implications for brand managers by indicating which national cultures may yield high-performing contributors.