Paying for Content or Paying for Community? The Effect of Social Involvement on Subscribing to Media Web Sites

Many sites have recently begun to encourage user participation and provide consumers with a virtual community wherein the user can create an on-site identity, make friends, and interact with other consumers. We study the interplay between users’ functional and social behavior on media sites and their willingness to pay for premium services. We use data from Last.fm, a site offering both music consumption and social networking features. The basic use of Last.fm is free and premium services are provided for a fixed subscription fee. While the premium services mainly improve the content consumption experience, we find that willingness to pay for premium services is strongly associated with the level of social activity of the user, and specifically, the community activity of the user. Our results represent new evidence of the importance of introducing community and social activities as drivers for consumers\u27 willingness to pay for online services

Repositioning of the brand TV cine & séries online: strategic analysis of the own means of social networks and online platform

This Work Project, conducted within a direct research internship at NOS, aims to propose a reposition of the brand TVCine & Séries online, focusing on a strategic analysis of the own means of social networks and online platforms. Through secondary data provided by NOS and collected online, in-depth interviews of current and past clients of the service and the author’s experience on the matter, recommendations were developed based on blue ocean strategy. On analyzing the most relevant attributes in the Pay TV industry’s strategy canvas, a new value curve is reconstructed for TVC&S. Over the elimination of static website, reduction of offline marketing expenditures to raise SEO design and social content tools usage, a new video on demand service must be created alongside with customer interactivity in the new user friendly website, which provides a flexible subscription fee scheme and a recommendation and customized service. These recommendations try to deliver a more focus, unique and clear message for the industry, enhancing TVC&S’s value innovation

What Drives Users to Pay for Freemium Services? Examining People’s Willingness to Pay for Music Services

Freemium is intended to be a promising method that allows content providers to earn money now that Web 2.0 users feel entitled to free software. However, industries that use freemium, like the music industry, still struggle to cover their costs. Despite its practical relevance, no studies have investigated why customers are willing to pay for a service that can also be used for free. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, we developed a research model to identify antecedents of consumers’ intentions and attitudes towards the premium version of music services when a free version is available. The results of our survey with 157 participants show that using the free version has a negative impact on users’ intention to pay for the premium version. Our practical implications indicate that music service providers should focus on the premium product and introduce a time-limited freemium

Analysing the Promotional Effects that Open Source Software has for Paid Editions:a Dual Mediation Hypothesis Approach for an Emerging Software Business Model

Attracting new leads to use a software product can be costly for a software vendor. One way to secure more leads is to offer trials and unpaid editions, but their use should not be arbitrary. The emerging business model of commercial open source allows a vendor to promote its software for free while converting some of the users to paid; but does the free community edition actually serve as promotion for the commercial edition? This promotional effect is measured through the user’s attitudes and cognitions towards the advertisement and their subsequent purchase intentions. Survey results from 134 users of a commercial open source vendor’s community are used to test the research question using a modified Dual Mediation Hypothesis model with premium fit, experience and price value as added variables to the model. The results suggest that community editions of software can indeed act as promotions for their commercial counterparts and validates the single vendor commercial open source business model. The results also indicate an important distinction between freemium and commercial open source. This is the first study known to bring the context of an emerging software business model, commercial open source, under analysis through the Dual Mediation Hypothesis

Consumers' intentions to subscribe to music streaming services

Digitalization has had a tremendous effect on the music industry and consequently the size of the industry has more than halved during the new millennium. The reason for the falling revenues of the industry lies in growing competition with other entertainment industries, digital music piracy, and poor service models that provide much less revenue for the industry as the previously dominant CD format. The industry is currently in transition from physical to digital and consumers need to be directed to use digital services that provide value to the industry. The most advanced and profitable digital service model today is the paid MaaS (Music as a Service) model, also known as subscription-based music streaming. Paid MaaS services are the fastest growing consumption model of music and their growth underpinned the first positive year for the recording industry in nearly two decades. So that the music industry could continue and accelerate its new-found growth, this thesis intends to find out the factors that affect consumers' behavioral intentions to adopt paid MaaS services. The research framework of this thesis is built from previous information services (IS) adoption literature, using effort expectancy (EE), facilitating conditions (FC), habit (HT), hedonic motivation (HM), perceived usefulness (PU), price value (PV), and social influence (SI) as hypothesized factors affecting consumers' behavioral intentions to use paid MaaS, as well as tangibility preference (TP), which is an extension to previous theories. The results of a survey with 136 participants indicate that HT, HM, and PV act as direct determinants of consumers' behavioral intention to use paid MaaS, explaining 53% of the variance in behavioral intention. The study has both, managerial and theoretical implications. It suggests that paid MaaS services should focus on providing their users a good price value and hedonic pleasure, while exploiting consumers' tendency for habitual system usage. On a theoretical side, this study sheds light on factors that determine the behavioral intention to use hedonic information systems. It suggests that in a highly hedonic IS system the determinant of PU loses its predictive power over behavioral intention and the importance of HM increases

A Review of Information Systems Research on Online Social Networks

Over the last decade, online social networks have evolved into a global mainstream medium with increasing social, organizational, and economic impact. This paper provides a structured overview of Information Systems research on this outstanding techno-social phenomenon of the 21st century via a structured literature review. Based on our search in information systems journals and conference proceedings that resulted in 510 papers, we carve out and assess the knowledge and the research fields that have been predominantly addressed and impacted by the information systems research community so far. Moreover, we identify research gaps that future research should address. We analyze how the academic discussion on online social networks developed in the information systems literature over time, which publication outlets are most receptive to research on online social networks, which research areas have already been covered by information systems research on online social networks, and what potential future research areas exist that have not been covered by information systems research yet. We hope that our results will stimulate and guide future research in this field

Customer Lifetime Network Value

Today, people are increasingly connected and extensively interact with each other using technology-enabled media. Hence, customers are more frequently exposed to social influence of other customers when making purchase decisions. However, established approaches for customer valuation most widely neglect network effects based on social influence leading to a misallocation of resources. Therefore, following a design-oriented approach, this paper develops a model for customer valuation referred to as the customer lifetime network value (CLNV) incorporating an integrated network perspective. By considering the net network contribution of customers, the CLNV reallocates values between customers based on social influence without changing the overall network value, that is, a firm’s customer equity. Using a real-world dataset of a European online social network, we demonstrate and evaluate the applicability of the CLNV. We show that the CLNV enables a sound determination of both individual customers’ value and firm’s customer equity and supports thorough customer segmentation

Beyond Information: The Role of Territory in Privacy Management Behavior on Social Networking Sites

This study draws on communication privacy management theory to explore aspects of social networking sites (SNSs) that may influence individual privacy management behaviors and conceptualizes two behaviors for managing privacy on SNSs: private disclosure (for managing information privacy) and territory coordination (for managing territory privacy). Evidence from two studies of SNS members indicates that perceptions of trespassing over agreed-upon virtual boundaries within SNSs affects risk beliefs regarding information privacy and territory privacy differently. These distinct privacy risk beliefs, in turn, influence two privacy management behaviors. Theoretically, this study demonstrates that a more complete conceptualization of individual privacy management on SNSs should consider both information privacy and territory privacy; and that territory coordination is a more significant indicator of privacy management behaviors on SNSs than private disclosure. From a practical standpoint, this study provides guidance to SNS platform organizations on how to reduce individuals’ privacy risk beliefs, encourage users to share private information, and potentially build larger online communities

Startup dilemmas - Strategic problems of early-stage platforms on the internet

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