The Mediating Effect of Experiential Value on Customers' Perceived Value of Digital Content: China's Anti-virus Program Market

Abstract

Digital content makes big changes to our daily lives while bringing opportunities and challenges for companies. Creative firms integrate pictures, texts, videos, audios, and data by digitalization to develop new products or services and create digital experiences to promote their brands. Most articles on digital content contribute to the basic concept or development of marketing it in literature. Actually, compared with traditional value chains for common products or services, the digital content industry seems to have more potential value. Because quite a bit of digital content is free to the consumer, price is not necessarily perceived as an indicator of the quality or value of information (Rowley 2008). It becomes evident that a current theme in digital content is the issue of “value,” and research on customers' perceived value of digital content is a necessity. This article argues that experiential value has an advantage in customers' evaluations of digital content.

Two different but related contributions to the understanding of “value” of digital content are made here. First, based on the comparison of digital content with products and services, the article proposes two key characteristics that make experiential strategy available for digital content: intangibility and near-zero reproduction cost. On top of that, based on the discussion of the gap between company's idealized value and customer's perceived value, this article emphasizes that digital content prices and pricing of digital content is different from products and services. As a result of intangibility, prices may not reflect customer value. Moreover, the cost of digital content in the development stage may be very high while reproduction costs shrink dramatically. Moreover, because of the value gap mentioned before, the pricing polices vary for different digital contents. For example, flat price policy is generally used for movies and music (Magiera 2001; Netherby 2002), while for continuous demand, digital content such as online games and anti-virus programs involves a more complicated matter of utility and competitive price levels. Digital content companies have to explore various kinds of strategies to overcome this gap. Rethinking marketing solutions such as advertisements, images, and word-of-mouth and their effect on customers' perceived value becomes essential. China's digital content industry is becoming more and more globalized and drawing special attention from different countries and regions that have respective competitive advantages. The 2008–2009 Annual Report on the Development of China's Digital Content Industry (CCID Consulting 2009) indicates that, with the driven power of domestic demand and governmental policy support, the country's digital content industry maintained a fast growth of some 30 percent in 2008, obviously indicating the initial stage of industry expansion. In China, anti-virus programs and other software programs which need to be updated use a quarter-based pricing policy. Customers can download a trial version for free and use it for six months or a year. If they want to use it longer, continuous payment is needed. They examine the excellence of the digital content during this trial period and decide whether to pay for continued usage. For China's music and movie industries, as a result of initial development, experiential strategy has not been much applied, even though firms in other countries find the trial experience and explore important strategies(such as customers listening to music for several seconds for free before downloading it). For the above reasons, anti-virus program may be a representative for digital content industry in China and an exploratory study of the advantage of experiential value in customer's perceived value of digital content is done in the anti-virus market of China. In order to enhance the reliability of the survey data, this study focused on people who were experienced users of anti-virus programs. The empirical results revealed that experiential value has a positive effect on customers' perceived value of digital content. In other words, because digital content is intangible and the reproduction costs are nearly zero, customers' evaluations are based heavily on their experience. Moreover, image and word-of-mouth do not have a positive effect on perceived value, only on experiential value. That is to say, a digital content value chain is different from that of a general product or service. Experiential value has a notable advantage and mediates the effect of image and word-of-mouth on perceived value.

The results of this study help provide an understanding of why free digital content downloads exist in developing countries. Customers can perceive the value of digital content only by using and experiencing it. This is also why such governments support the development of digital content. Other developing countries whose digital content business is also in the beginning stage can make use of the suggestions here. Moreover, based on the advantage of experiential strategy, companies should make more of an effort to invest in customers' experience, As a result of the characteristics and value gap of digital content, customers perceive more value in the intangible digital content only by experiencing what they really want Moreover, because of the near-zero reproduction costs, companies can perhaps use experiential strategy to enhance customer understanding of digital content.

摘要

数字内容在给公司帝来机遇和挑战的同时也极大的改变了我 们的生活。创意企业整合视频、图片、文本和数据进行数字化 过的音频,开发新产品或服务，创作数字经骚推广 自 己的品牌。 大多數有关数字内容的文献是关于基^t 念或者营销的发展。 其实,比起普通产品或服务的传统价值链, 数字内容产业似乎有 更多的豫在條值。因为相当多的数字内容是免费的,條格, 作为 信息的质量或价值的指杯, 不是必须被感知的(Rowley 2008) 很显然,当前数字内容的主题是“价值”和关于消费者对数字内容 的感知价值的研究。本文讨论了体验价值在消 费者评估数字内 容时的优势。

本文在对数字内容"价值”的理解方面有两个不同但是相关的 贵献。第ᅳ, 基于数字内容与普通产品和服务的比较, 本文提 出了两个关键特点使得体验战略适合数字内容：无形和接近于 零的再造成本。最重要的是,基于对公司的理想化的价值和客户 的感知价值之间的差导的讨论,本文强调了数字内容的价格和定 价与普通产品和服务的不同。无形的结果是, 价格可能并不反 映顿客感知价值0 另外,数字内容的成本处在发展Bh段可能非常 高但再造会大幅缩水。而且,由于前面提到的价值鸿沟,这个价 格政策改变因不同的数字内容而不同。例如,平价战略通常用于 电影和音乐(Magiera 2001;Netherby 2002),而有持续的需求的数 字内容如在线游戏和杀毒软件的问题牵涉到ᅳ个更复杂的效用 和极具竟争力的价格水平。数字内容企业必须探索各种各样的 策略来克服这个缺口。对于广告、形象、口碑等常用的市场战 略和他们对顿客感知价值的影响的研究变得至关重要。中国数 字内容产业正变得越来越国际化, 并引起了具有各自竟争优势 的 国 家和地区 的 关注。2008-2009 中 国数字 内 容产 业年度发展报 告(CCIDConsulting 2009)表明,在国 内 需求和^•政策的大力 支 持下, 中 国数字 内容产 业在2008年保持 了 大约30%的快速增长, 表明了这个产业在明显的初期扩张阶段。在中国, 需要更新的 杀毒软件和其他软件程序使用季度定价政策。用户可以免费下 载试用版,用6个月或ᅳ年。如果他们更久的使用, 连续的付款 方式是必要的。他们在试用阶段检测数字内容的优良度, 决定 是否要付继续使用。对于中 国的音乐和 电影工业的发展战略,体 验最相没有被广 泛的应用,虽然其他国家的公司注意到体验的重 要性并探索 了 相 关的战略 (如客户 在 下 载前有好几秒可 以 免费听 听音乐)。由于上述原因,杀毒款件在中国可以代表数字内容产 业而且在 中 国 杀毒市场探索 了 体验价值在顿客的数字 内容感知 价值中的优势。为了提高谓查数据的可靠性,该研究集中在那些 有使用杀毒软件经验的人群。实ᅳii结果显示，⑩條值对颜客对 数字内容的感知价值有积极的影响。换句话说,因为数字内容是 无形的、再造成本几乎为零, 客户的评估是根据他们的⑩。 另夕卜,形 象和 口碑不产 生积极的影响,只对体验价值有影响。这就是说,数字 内容价值链不 同 于普通产 品或服务。^•价值有显 著的优势并谓节形象和口碑对感知价值的作用。

这个研究结果有助于了解为什麼在发展中 国家存在免费的数 字内容下载。客户只有通过体验它才可以感知数字内容的价 值。这也是为什么政府如此扶持发展数字内容。其他发展中国 ᄄ起步阶段的数字内容企业可以借鉴这里的建议。另外,基于 ⑩战略的优势,公司应该更努力投资于客户的体验。由于数字

Keywords:

• Digital content
• Perceived value
• Experiential value
• Experiential strategy
• Anti-virus program

풍鍵뀔:

• 关键•同 ： 数字内容
• 感知价
• 体验价
• 体验战
• 杀毒软件