NDLI: Building an Online Reputation with Free Content: Evidence from the E-Book Market

Please wait, while we are loading the content...

Building an Online Reputation with Free Content: Evidence from the E-Book Market

Content Provider	Scilit
Author	Zegners, Dainis
Copyright Year	2017
Description	Journal: SSRN Electronic Journal An important strategy for sellers to build a reputation is to practice introductory pricing. By selling at a lower introductory price, sellers increase demand, induce more buyers to provide feedback, and thus build a reputation more quickly. I examine a form of introductory pricing that is particularly popular in digital markets: offering digital content for free. I argue that offering free content to build a reputation can be a double-edged strategy. It does not only attract buyers with a high preference, but also buyers with a low preference. Low-preference buyers give worse feedback than high-preference buyers, inducing a negative selection effect on a seller's reputation. I estimate the strength of this effect using data from an online self-publishing platform where I observe authors either selling their e-books at a price or giving them away as free content. By exploiting the fact that I observe ratings for free and purchased versions of the same e-book, I show that those buyers who obtain an e-book as free content rate it worse than those buyers purchasing the e-book at a positive price, consistent with a negative selection effect on reputation.
Related Links	https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/168293/1/VfS-2017-pid-3605.pdf https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=2753635
ISSN	10914358
e-ISSN	15565068
DOI	10.2139/ssrn.2753635
Journal	SSRN Electronic Journal
Language	English
Publisher	Elsevier BV
Publisher Date	2017-04-21
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Journal: SSRN Electronic Journal Obstetrics and Gynecology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health Psychiatry and Mental Health

Central Library (ISO-9001:2015 Certified)
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Kharagpur, West Bengal, India | PIN - 721302

See location in the Map
03222 282435
Mail: support@ndl.gov.in

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in