How and for what purposes global food brands use online contests: Entertainment or innovation?

Abstract

Based on an overview of 90 contests in the food sector this paper aims at reaching a better understanding of the many drivers pushing companies to launch contests, and thus suggesting a possible classification of the contest types. The emerged contests types are the following: Entertainment (pure entertainment; surveying; talent scouting) and ideation (product; sustainability; advertising). Entertainment, in its broad definition, results to be the main purpose. Surprisingly, only a few contests were classifiable as "ideation/sustainability", in contrast with several authors who claim that increasingly, companies recognize innovation contests as instruments for alerting attention towards today’s most urgent sustainability issues and for mastering them.