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Fortune or Prestige? The effects of content price on sales and customer satisfaction

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  • Yang, Zhi
  • Cao, Xia
  • Wang, Feng
  • Lu, Chongyu

Abstract

Although content sharing on the Internet used to be free of charge, increasing numbers of customers are willing to pay for shared online content. However, little is known about whether, when, and why the price of shared content affects the benefits of sharer. Using a secondary data analysis and two lab experiments, this paper examines the effect of content pricing on content sales and customer satisfaction. The results indicate that content price has a divergent impact on sales and customer satisfaction. Specifically, an increase in content price improves sales but hurts customer satisfaction for certified sharers; an increase in content price hurts sales but improves customer satisfaction for non-certified sharers. Thus, content sharers cannot use the pricing mechanism to simultaneously enjoy high sales (fortune) and high customer satisfaction (prestige), and they need the trade-off between sales and customer satisfaction. These findings have theoretical and managerial implications for content sharing.

Suggested Citation

  • Yang, Zhi & Cao, Xia & Wang, Feng & Lu, Chongyu, 2022. "Fortune or Prestige? The effects of content price on sales and customer satisfaction," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 426-435.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:146:y:2022:i:c:p:426-435
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.03.075
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