Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments October 7, 2015 erstellt
Beschreibung:
Many online content providers aim to compensate for a loss in advertising revenues by charging consumers for access to content. However, such a choice is not straightforward because subscription fees typically deter customers and a resulting decline in viewership further reduces advertising revenues. This research examines whether firms that offer both free and paid content can benefit from adjusting the amount of content offered for free. We find that firms should offer more free - and not paid - content in periods of high demand. We motivate theoretically that this policy which we term 'counter-cyclical offering' may be optimal for firms when consumers are heterogeneous in their valuation of online content, this heterogeneity varies over time, and more so for low consumer types than for high types. Using unique data from an online content provider, we then provide empirical evidence that firms indeed engage in counter-cyclical offering and increase the share of free content in periods of high demand