Multiformat Digital Products: How Design Attributes Interact with Usage Situations to Determine Choice

Abstract

Technological advances enable companies to offer information products such as books, music, and movies in electronic formats, in addition to the traditional physical formats. Although one format may appear more useful and be preferred, consumers may be enticed to consider the unique attributes of all formats if they deliver equally well on salient attributes. The authors investigate the impact of usage situations, relative attribute quality levels of the formats and their interactions on the perception of the formats as perfect or imperfect substitutes or complements, and the purchase likelihood of the bundle of formats. The study demonstrates that when formats have equivalent quality on a salient attribute, consumers perceive the formats as more complementary and are more likely to buy the bundle. This happens because consumers consider more usage situations for the formats and view the bundle as providing greater flexibility for future usages.

Digital dark matter within product service systems

“…The context of the research (the music industry) is sector specific but the results and methods can be considered for use in other creative industries such as publishing or motion pictures (Parry et al, 2014a) facing similar transitions towards a cannibalistic combination of physical and digital formats (Greenstein, 2010;Koukova et al, 2012). Results are also relevant for the private sector.…”

The digital continuum: the influence of ownership, access, control, and Cocreation on digital offerings

“…This nomenclature provides a convenient heuristic for understanding not only what the Digital Continuum represents, but also for visualizing the range of digital offerings from one end to the other. (2012) Information Products Content that can be rendered in different formats Books, music, movies, language instruction services Koukova et al (2012) controlsuch as saved to a local drive, held on a business' server, or recorded on an optical disk (e.g., Blu-ray). We do not suggest full ownership, as the content usually remains the intellectual property of some other entity.…”

“…Example 4: Mixes. Certain consumers may consider different versions of the same offering as complementary rather than as substitutes and may purchase/subscribe to both (Kannan et al 2009;Koukova et al 2012). Indeed, "consumers are increasingly cobbling together several online media services that provide an experience that works best for their household in terms of content, viewing options, and cost" (Leichtman Research Group 2017, p. 2).…”

Media Discontinuance: Modeling the Diffusion “S” Curve to Declines in Media Use

“…McCombs (1972) used this functional alternative to explain the effect of movies, TV, and radio on newspapers, and found that to some extent each of the newer media eroded the per-household circulation of daily newspapers. However, an incumbent medium is not necessarily destined to be replaced with a new medium: consumers who perceive both old and new media formats as satisfying their needs are willing to purchase multi-format bundles with the same content on multiple formats (Koukova, Kannan, & Kirmani, 2012). The result can be a co-existences of competing media formats.…”