Empowering Consumers, Building Brands: How Crowdsourcing Contests Strengthen Brand Passion
- Crowdsourcing contests are often viewed as open innovation tools. This article shows that they can also strengthen emotional consumer-brand relationships. Drawing on psychological empowerment theory, the study examines how perceived empowerment during participation in a crowdsourcing contest influ-
ences changes in brand passion. Using multisource data from a real-world SWAROVSKI GEMS™ contest, the findings show that empowerment is positively associated with increases in brand passion. This relationship is
strengthened by relationship motivation and perceived fairness, while reward motivation does not significantly weaken the effect. The study contributes to research on consumer empowerment, co-creation, and brand passion by identifying empowerment as a psychological mechanism through which participatory brand initiatives foster affective consumer-brand relationships.
