Research on the Application Advantages of Crowdfunding Model in University Market Based on Digital Information Technology-The Case of Chinese College Students' Training Industry

Abstract

From the perspective of crowdfunding financing, this article attempts to make a breakthrough in the current thought of social crowdfunding, and takes the college student training industry as the carrier to conduct an in-depth study of the application advantages of the share-based crowdfunding model in the university market compared with social crowdfunding in many aspects, such as shareholder relations, business management, human resources, business income generation and equity transfer. Thus, while exploring the application of crowdfunding mode in college students' training industry under the background of the current digital information technology era, it also improves the disadvantages of college students in terms of capital, products, time and manpower in the process of innovation and entrepreneurship practice. It provides an important reference for the current competitive off-campus training enterprises to find a way to achieve market breakthrough at the lowest cost, and also helps contemporary college students to face their future innovation and entrepreneurship ideas and practical theoretical research at the application level.

Headnote

Abstract

From the perspective of crowdfunding financing, this article attempts to make a breakthrough in the current thought of social crowdfunding, and takes the college student training industry as the carrier to conduct an in-depth study of the application advantages of the share-based crowdfunding model in the university market compared with social crowdfunding in many aspects, such as shareholder relations, business management, human resources, business income generation and equity transfer. Thus, while exploring the application of crowdfunding mode in college students' training industry under the background of the current digital information technology era, it also improves the disadvantages of college students in terms of capital, products, time and manpower in the process of innovation and entrepreneurship practice. It provides an important reference for the current competitive off-campus training enterprises to find a way to achieve market breakthrough at the lowest cost, and also helps contemporary college students to face their future innovation and entrepreneurship ideas and practical theoretical research at the application level.

Keywords

Share Crowdfunding, University Market, College Student Training, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

1. Introduction

1.1 Research background

In terms of the current situation of college students' innovation and entrepreneurship, although the state and the university have given a large amount of subsidies in china, to really operate a project or even establish a company, college students still need to face various problems. The most direct reason is that large projects cannot be carried out due to insufficient funds; No specific products or services due to insufficient technology and production capacity; Due to the limited after-class time, it is unable to put into post-operation and management all day; Due to the lack of human resources and team experience, it is difficult to compete with peers in the society. Finally, the entrepreneurial direction of the current college students has turned more to Internet operation and commodity consignment, which not only greatly limits their innovative ideas and profitability, but also may cause more responsibility problems due to their unclear quality of the goods or services they represent.

Similarly, for Chinese college student training industry, especially the postgraduate and public examination training in the university market, because its main consumer group is fresh students, the mobility of students in school makes the general commodity evaluation system such as the return rate difficult to apply to the training enterprises around the university. And because of the lower consumption level of college students, the customers they face are more cautious than the blindness of parents in primary and secondary education. At the same time, college students have a certain herd mentality in the selection of education brands based on their environment, which makes the competition between education and training enterprises particularly fierce. However, based on the special background of the current state's rectification of the off-school education and training industry and the epidemic situation, the training mode of hundreds of people, which was once praised by major training institutions, is also difficult to meet the current objective conditions, and finally forces a large number of training enterprises into an unprecedented predicament.

Therefore, it is extremely urgent to find a new business model for both college students and training enterprises. Through campus crowdfunding, the training project is introduced into the students' group, and the current business model of off-campus training is completely reshaped, and the risk aversion of personnel gathering originally undertaken by enterprises is turned into the spontaneous learning behavior of students in the school. It can not only greatly reduce the costs of enterprises and students, and realize the sharing of risks and benefits, but also actively respond to the call of the country, so that students can complete the corresponding training content without leaving school. At the same time, it has broken through the problems faced by college students' entrepreneurship, such as project funds, product services, labor time, human resources, and finally, based on the participation of a large number of students, while deepening the cultivation of college students' innovation and entrepreneurship concepts, it can quickly help the training enterprises get rid of the current business difficulties, and achieve real mutual benefit and win-win results.

1.2 Literature review

In terms of social crowdfunding, Sun Tinghui explored the advantages of equity crowdfunding in terms of financing channels, financing costs, human resources and investment efficiency according to the research on domestic crowdfunding mechanism and risk (Sun Tinghui, 2017). Jiang Weihua conducted in-depth research on the risks of China's current crowdfunding model in terms of morality, law, expectation, proxy holding, liquidity and over-issuance, as well as the current situation and countermeasures in terms of exit protection, property rights infringement and other regulatory aspects (Jiang Weihua, 2017). Wan Juan also put forward some preventive suggestions through risk analysis of crowdfunding model based on various factors such as platform, sponsor, investor and project itself (Wan Juan, 2018). Zhao Chengguo and other scholars studied the intellectual property rights, government support, legal supervision, credit risk, cognition and professionalism of China's small Internet technology enterprises in crowdfunding (Zhao Chengguo & Li Meng, 2018). And Xie Yuting et al. listed the risks of current social crowdfunding in management, innovation, ethics, information symmetry and adverse selection by sorting out a large number of scholars' research results (Xie Yuting, Hu Chungang, Du Wenjing, Xu Hongye, & Lu Ying, 2020).

In terms of university crowdfunding, Li Duo et al., based on the national trend of postgraduate entrance examination and the survey of a large number of students in local areas, as well as the research on the advantages and risks of crowdfunding financing, purposefully proposed the design idea of the postgraduate entrance examination crowdfunding platform, and accumulated early experience for the application of crowdfunding mode in the field of college student training (Li Duo, Bai Yujuan, & Wang Moxuan, 2016). Yang Wen deeply analyzed its advantages and possible risks in financing, production, learning, dividend and other aspects according to the course crowdfunding model launched by the off-campus training brand "Muke" for learners, and also provided an important exploration for the application of crowdfunding model in the field of education (Yang Wen, 2017). While Wang Keling and other scholars conducted in-depth research on the feasibility and influencing factors of the return crowdfunding model within the student community from the perspective of college students (Wang Keling, Zhang Can, & Wang Zhengguo, 2018), Zhou Jinbo and other scholars also put forward the idea of building an accurate entrepreneurship education system based on the high-quality characteristics of crowdfunding mode according to various problems in entrepreneurship education for college students in China, laying a foundation for the practical exploration of crowdfunding mode in entrepreneurship for college students (Zhou Jingbo & Song Zhanyang, 2019).

2. Crowdfunding scheme

2.1 Initiation method

Seek cooperation between college students training enterprises and student associations through cooperation to build regional companies with universities as their business scope. Based on the current mature digital information technolo- gy, training enterprises can hold a certain proportion of equity through technology shareholding, and provide video courses and materials for student associations as suppliers, and then crowdfunding most of the equity of the target university's training business to students of the university (Lichen, 2021). The raised funds will be registered in the form of corporate investment. The name of student shareholders will not appear separately. A large number of student shareholders will only hold shares in the corporate as a member of the corporate, while the corporate and off-campus training enterprises will hold shares in the regional companies of the university. After the regional company is officially established, the student association will be fully responsible for the specific publicity and training work of the company in the school. After the income is paid to the student employees of the association, the dividends will be distributed to the off-campus enterprises and student shareholders.

This program not only legalizes the shares of student groups, eliminates the doubts of student shareholders, but also stimulates the labor enthusiasm of student shareholders and associations by changing the largest shareholder of regional companies into associations. So as to ensure the convenience and feasibility of the transfer of students' individual equity in the university in the future, on the premise of the overall unchanged shares of the community, and to some extent encourage the enthusiasm of the student management, and enhance the sense of corporate belonging of the student shareholders. Finally, with the student associations on campus as the intermediary, the social crowdfunding initiated by the original social organization to the public is transformed into the campus crowdfunding initiated by the university associations as the student organizations to the students, and the open private fund-raising behavior is transformed into the fund-raising behavior within the student groups, which not only ensures the investors' monitoring of the use of funds at any time, ensures the safety of funds, but also makes the crowdfunding behavior reasonable and legal.

2.2 Willingness to participate

For training enterprises, university crowdfunding is not about money but people, it can also be said that it is about the influence on the target university training market. Therefore, crowdfunding for university student groups should be more low-cost and decentralized, trying to bundle more consumers through the way of joining, and rapidly expand the influence of the enterprise brand in the target university. At the same time, by limiting the proportion of individual shares and the private transfer mode within the target university students, the shareholders of the company will always be locked in the potential consumer groups within the consumer market, and the number of shareholder groups will be maintained in a balanced state. It prevents crowdfunding enterprises from losing their influence on the university market due to the graduation of student shareholders, ensures that the company can obtain a considerable amount of fixed income from the shareholder group every year, and provides the most basic guarantee for the sustainable development of projects in the university.

For students, holding shares in crowdfunding companies can not only obtain certain economic benefits through dividends; Moreover, as the true owner of the company, all training courses within the company's business scope can enjoy huge discounts; Students can also participate in the daily management of the company without leaving school, and have the management experience of a startup company under less work pressure, which will provide no small help for future work and learning. It has great attraction for students who are preparing for part-time earning, entrepreneurship practice, investment and financial management and examination training, and provides a necessary demand basis for the continuous transfer of the company's equity. At the same time, it also enables student shareholders to improve their expectations and vision for the future of the company after receiving dividends and preferential treatment, thus helping the positive transfer of the company's equity within the student group, and maintaining the long-term stability of the number of student shareholders.

3. Advantage analysis

As far as the current common crowdfunding methods are concerned, they are basically financing methods for the whole society to initiate and gather people interested in a certain project or cause to jointly contribute and make profits. The purpose is to exchange a large number of micro-investments by sharing profits, thus attracting social idle funds and diversifying investment risks. However, the capital profit-seeking nature of social financing is natural, because the most fundamental purpose of most investors is to participate in large projects and obtain profit sharing through a small amount of funds. Their contribution to the project is basically limited to the financial support during the financing process at the project start-up stage. In the later stage, the operation and profit of the project itself is either unreachable or not able, It can't help the later profits of crowdfunding projects, and may even be difficult to sustain due to the problems of profit distribution and business philosophy. Compared with social crowdfunding, university crowdfunding has obvious advantages in terms of shareholder relations, business management, human resources, business income generation and equity transfer.

3.1 Shareholder relationship

The shareholders convened by social crowdfunding are likely to come from all walks of life, even from all parts of the country. They can be said to be completely strangers to each other. In this case, the interests alliance formed is too loose. Therefore, it is inevitable that many shareholders will be nervous to put their money together and entrust it to a few people, even if they hire a professional management team. Under this unstable shareholder relationship, when the shareholders of social crowdfunding projects focus on discussing business issues, everyone will have their own small calculation at the same time, that is, how to realize capital appreciation and timely realization at the fastest speed, and can't really come to the most long-term and effective plan in the interests of the company.

The campus crowdfunding proposed in this paper is mainly aimed at the potential customers of the company in the future, even if they are not familiar with each other from different majors. After the community has verified the identity information of each student shareholder, only the identity of the student is the greatest trust between each other, and the school is the greatest guarantee for the identity of each shareholder. In addition to the simple social relations of students in school, all student shareholders are naturally a whole, and the biggest vision of student shareholders for the company is not to realize quickly, but to obtain more benefits and discounts through long-term holding of company shares, which makes there is no conflict of interest between student shareholders. Therefore, in the internal resolution of student shareholders, it is easier for all shareholders to move forward and backward towards the same goal, and effectively exert the maximum advantages brought by crowdfunding.

3.2 Operation and management

Since most investors of social crowdfunding have their own business or have no management experience in the corresponding industry, most investors have no ability and energy to assume corresponding job responsibilities, except for a few promoters who may have some knowledge of the target industry, and cannot provide great help to the operation of the project in the future operation and management. Therefore, projects initiated by social crowdfunding usually recruit full-time management teams to operate, while the hired management teams can not completely deal with problems in the interests of investors in the process of management and operation, which is very easy to cause resource waste and cost increase. Not only is it not conducive to the effective supervision of crowdfunding, but also it will quickly consume the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of many micro investors. Even if a few investors undertake the corresponding management work, there are also the same operational risks.

The campus crowdfunding proposed in this paper for training enterprise video courses does not require special knowledge and skills in terms of the business itself. It only needs to know about the relevant courses to carry out consulting services, and poster posting, video playing, data distribution and other work do not require too much work skills. It is completely competent for students in school, and all work except for the consulting service, which requires personnel rotation, other work can be completed in students' spare time. At the same time, because college students have no vicissitudes and slickness of social employment personnel in their mentality, and some are just fledgling vitality and curiosity about corporate life, the later operation of the program can be completely completed by the students of corresponding majors selected by the student shareholders to form a team, such as marketing majors responsible for publicity and promotion, education majors responsible for organizing teaching, accounting and finance majors responsible for approval and bookkeeping. Although lacking in experience, students have more learning motivation and community practice experience than social employees, and can better transform the enterprise's in-school marketing into the publicity and promotion of the community, so as to effectively approach student consumers and achieve market breakthroughs.

3.3 Human resources

In general, social crowdfunding will be managed by the sponsor in the later stage of the project under special circumstances. In most cases, it is necessary to hire a special person to take charge of the project. In addition, because social crowdfunding projects are generally profit-oriented to social consumers, no matter what products they operate, they need to hire a large number of grassroots employees to maintain the normal operation of the project, and human resources problems are unavoidable. In addition to the special financing methods, the operation process of social crowdfunding projects is the same as that of individual investment projects, which still need to face a variety of problems such as personnel shortage, lack of technology, frequent flow, labor disputes and so on. In addition, full-time long-term repetitive labor may not only reduce the enthusiasm of employees, but also need to bear more labor remuneration, such as holiday wages, which has virtually increased the operating costs of enterprises and become one of the main problems in the development and expansion of crowdfunding projects.

However, the campus crowdfunding mentioned in this article has no problem that ordinary enterprises cannot find and retain talents. Relying on a large number of student shareholders, it has virtually established a huge talent pool for crowdfunding projects. Compared with social crowdfunding, it not only saves a lot of recruitment costs, but also can quickly supplement in the case of personnel loss, avoiding the impact of short-term personnel structure adjustment on enterprise operation. Through the establishment of the system that the management level of the association changes with the students, the staff can be changed once a year, the management personnel can be elected once a year, and the shareholder group can also change blood year by year with the transfer of the graduates' shares, so that the crowdfunding project can achieve long-term prosperity and full of new forces, and also ensure that the student staff can work together towards the year-end reward at any time, avoiding the slack caused by long-term work. Moreover, to maintain the operation of the project through a large number of part-time students can not only play the publicity effect that can not be achieved by the off-campus personnel in the university in all aspects, but also be managed by the student association as the largest shareholder in person. There is no labor relationship between the off-campus training enterprise and the individual students, and all possible problems are solved within the students, reducing a large number of unnecessary disputes.

3.4 Business income generation

The shareholders who are attracted by social crowdfunding are generally for investment purposes, and their contribution to the profits within the scope of the company's business is not high. Even if there is a drop in the bucket, it is difficult to maintain the company's operation. For example, crowdfunding coffee shop, even if it is a shareholder who can't put down coffee, it is difficult to bring much impact on the overall income of a coffee shop only by personal consumption. Moreover, for each social investor, the profits he or she contributes will not be returned to his or her hands until they are divided into countless shares. Therefore, the shareholders of social crowdfunding projects may give priority to the company's products in the selection of similar products, but they will never use their own funds to subsidize everyone's projects. Therefore, the profits of social crowdfunding projects in the later stage mainly come from social consumers, and they have not obtained absolute advantages in the horizontal competition due to their unique financing methods.

The main product of the campus crowdfunding project discussed in this paper is the training courses for various examinations of college students, which are required for all student shareholders, so that the project can obtain hundreds of fixed consumers without marketing, and with the graduation of students and the transfer of equity each year, there will be a natural increase of countless consumers. Although the student shareholders' meeting enjoys certain benefits, in terms of the particularity of the education and training industry products, the marginal cost of a single student is very low, and its scale effect and publicity effect will have a huge impact on the company's brand promotion. And for student shareholders, not only can they get the substantial discounts of all training courses during their schooling, but also can they get the company's equity and the opportunity to share dividends and part-time jobs, which will make them more loyal and supportive to crowdfunding projects, and use their own internal advantages to further promote and promote the company's products, which will provide great help to promote the market competition of crowdfunding enterprises in colleges and universities.

4. Conclusion

Based on the current mature digital information technology, the crowdfunding scheme of colleges and universities is constructed. Through crowdfunding to the target customer groups within colleges and universities, the university training enterprises with increasingly fierce external competition are transformed from blind publicity to internal service organizations that provide various training course video materials for college students. By transforming the student group from a simple consumer to an operator or even an owner, it not only solved the problems of large training expenses and high risks for students from the standpoint of students, but also provided new management ideas for the lege training enterprises that are gradually in trouble due to the impact of the external environment at this stage. This way of contracting the education brand training business with video courses through student part-time job and general contracting of the community not only helps the off-campus enterprises expand the consumer market through technology shareholding and resolve the business crisis from the external environment, so that they can broaden the communication channel between enterprises and consumers in stable and in-depth contact with the student group; Moreover, the introduction of the financing and management concept of stock crowdfunding into the practice and exploration of college students' innovation and entrepreneurship also makes the original disadvantages of the student entrepreneurship team in terms of funds, products, time, manpower and other aspects transform into competitive advantages in local areas through strategic transformation, and provides a feasible solution for various problems faced by col- lege students' entrepreneurship at present.

Sidebar

How to cite this paper: Chen Li, Qi Li. (2023). Research on the Application Advantages of Crowdfunding Model in University Market Based on Digital Information Technology-The Case of Chinese College Students' Training Industry. The Educational Review, USA, 7(6), 707-712.

Received: May 31, 2023

Accepted: June 29, 2023

Published: July 25, 2023

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