• 한국산학경영학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.4-22
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• 2004

The Internet provides a new distribution channel of digital contents for conventional media firms such as newspaper, magazine and encyclopedia publishers and broadcasting companies with very low marginal production and distribution cost. In comparison to traditional offline channel, there have been various revenue models in online content markets such as advertising model, subscription model, affiliation fee model, etc. In the earlier of the Internet era, most of online content firms provided their services free in order to boost offline revenue or they depend on advertising revenue sources in lieu of attaining revenue from their contents. However, as many online content firms are confronted with many difficulties in attaining revenues from online advertising model, they began to charge their contents. This paper shows why they charge their contents and explores entry conditions when conventional firms enter online content markets. And also this paper discusses managerial implications related to pricing strategies in online content markets.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.53-62
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• 2006

Many information providers in the electronic market struggle to attain revenue from their information goods including contents or other services and they tend to charge for their contents or services since they are confronted with difficulties in attaining revenue from online advertising. This study examines why they begin to charge for their contents or services and explores Pricing strategies for their contents. Also, this paper explores business strategies when conventional offline contents firms enter the online contents market and draws some implications for the condition of entry of offline contents providers into the online market.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.123-138
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• 2013

Keyword advertising has been used as a promotion tool rather than the advertising itself to online retailers. This is because the online retailer expects the direct sales increase when they deploy the keyword sponsorship. In practice, many online sellers rely on keyword advertising to promote their sales in short term with limited budget. Most of the previous researches use direct revenue factors as dependent variables such as CTR (click through rate) and CVI (conversion per impression) in their researches on the keyword advertising[14, 16, 22, 25, 31, 32]. Previous studies were, however, conducted in the context of aggregate-level due to the limitations on the data availability. These researches cannot evaluate the performance of keyword advertising in the individual level. To overcome these limitations, our research focuses on conversion of keyword advertising in individual-level. Also, we consider manageable factors as independent variables in terms of online retailers (the costs of keyword by implementation methods and meanings of keyword). In our study we developed the keyword advertising conversion model in the individual-level. With our model, we can make some theoretical findings and managerial implications. Practically, in the case of a fixed cost plan, an increase of the number of clicks is revealed as an effective way. However, higher average CPC is not significantly effective in increasing probability of purchase conversion. When this type (fixed cost plan) of implementation could not generate a lot of clicks, it cannot significantly increase the probability of purchase choice. Theoretically, we consider the promotional attributes which influence consumer purchase behavior and conduct individuals-level research based on the actual data. Limitations and future direction of the study are discussed.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.606-632
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• 2021

With many consumers being exposed to news via social media platforms, news organizations are challenged to attract visitors and generate revenue during visits to their websites. They therefore need detailed information on how to write articles and headlines to increase visitors' engagement with the content to drive advertising revenues. For those news organizations whose business model depends mainly on advertisements, rather than subscriptions, it is particularly crucial to understand what makes the website attractive to their visitors, what drives users to stay on the website, and what factors affect a user's exit decision. The current research examines individual news consumers' choices to find patterns of increase or decrease in user engagement relative to a variety of topics, as well as to the mood or tone of the content. Using clickstream data from a major news organization, the authors develop a user-level dynamic model of clickstream behavior that takes into account the content of both headlines and stories that visitors read. The authors find that readers appear to exhibit state dependence in the tone of the articles that they read. They also show how the topics expressed in headlines can affect the amount of content readers consume when visiting the news organization to a much larger degree than the topics expressed in the content of the article. Online publishers can make use of such findings to present visitors with content that is likely to maintain and/or increase their engagement and consequently drive advertising revenue.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.97-112
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• 2007

Most traditional newspaper publishers provide online editions to counter the competition of online news providers. However, the relationship between the online and print editions of the same newspaper has not been clearly defined. Some see the online newspaper as a substitute, while others consider it a complement. A 2002 NAA online newspaper consumer survey indicated that one-third of its respondents said they were now using the print newspaper less. Others have argued that the online edition will not wipe out print consumption, and may even complement it. While the print edition offers particular advantages such as portability, less eye strain, and the tactile experience of a printed page, the online edition also offers specific advantages such as access to breaking news, continually updated information, access to old archives, etc. All these factors would tend to lower the degree of interchangeability between the products. However, recent empirical studies show that the online edition is a substitute for rather than a complement of the print edition. Still, to some print readers, the online edition provides additional value. In this paper, by capturing the two different aspects of online editions the substitute aspect and the additional value added aspect as well as other available online alternatives, we develop an analytical model to derive the optimal production and distribution strategies of both online and print editions. Confronting the "free versus fee" issue, we show that it is optimal to provide an online version of the print newspaper for free to non-print subscribers. However, the amount of free news content that the publishers need to put on the Web depends on the available alternatives on the online market. The "fee" and "free" options both have merits and demerits as well. If the publisher charges for the online version of the print newspaper, she can generate revenue from the fee charged to online readers. However, doing so will limit the size of the online audience and further reduce online advertising revenue. At the same time, by providing a high-quality online version and charging for it, the price of the print newspaper must stay low in order to lure high valued readers. On the contrary, if the publisher provides an online version of the print newspaper for free, she can obtain a larger audience for the online version. At the same time, by providing a low-quality online newspaper, the publisher can increase the print newspaper price to get more revenue from high valued offline readers, although no revenue is incoming from online version readers. Through systematic measuring of all the pros and cons, our analysis shows that the optimal option is not "fee" but "free."

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.117-144
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• 2008

Lots of virtual communities and online businesses presently derive their primary sources of revenues through advertising, but nevertheless are plagued with marginal profitability though they might possess a significant user base. In the light of the need for an efficacious business model, there have been recent insights of an online community in particular reaping profits through an innovative and lucrative revenue generation method that earns by selling digital items. There have been some obvious evidences (e.g., Cyworld, SecondLife, Habo Hotel, etc.) that online communities can be profitable through their unique business model of selling digital items. However, there is lack of understanding about the motivation of purchasing digital items. This study tries to identify the main motivators of digital item purchases based on social/individual identity theory and self-presentation theory. "Digital items", otherwise known as "virtual assets", may include online avatars, accessories for the avatars, decorative ornaments like furniture, digital wallpapers, skins, background music and virtual weapons used for Internet games. These digital items are employed by users for representation and articulation in the online space, especially to create and enhance their online profiles in web pages and games. Prices for digital items typically range from a few cents to a few dollars each. Based on the theoretical framework like social identity theory and self-presentation theory, we developed the research model and proposed seven hypotheses. An analysis of 225 members of Cyworld found that digital item purchase intention in virtual world is affected by both members' need for self-presentation and need for affiliation. We also found that the need for self-presentation is significantly increased by innovativeness of members, community group norm, and community involvement. We concluded that the need for self-presentation could be a key variable for profitable business model in online community service industry. However, neither individual self-efficacy nor the need for affiliation significantly influenced the need for self-presentation which triggers purchase intention of digital items. In term of the theoretical and practical contribution, this study can be a pioneering empirical research that investigates the purchase intention of digital items based on social identity theory and self-presentation theory in the online context. Also, the findings of our study are valuable and practical for practitioners in the market who wish to adopt or improve the business model of selling digital items in an online community. From the findings, it can be seen that innovativeness of users, community group norm, and community involvement are three significant factors that influence need for self-presentation of users which ultimately leads to their intentions to buy digital items. These findings put forth that virtual community providers and online businesses selling digital items should prioritize their efforts and focus on these three factors if they want to increase the sales of these digital items and generate greater revenues. This study provides important implications for academic researchers and practitioners to understand why the community members pay money for their digital items in virtual world and how the practitioners can increase the sales of digital items in an online community. A couple of limitations of the study and future research directions are also discussed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.75-100
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• 2018

Mobile devices have become an important channel for news content usage in our daily life. However, online news content readers' resistance to online news monetization is more serious than other digital content businesses, such as webtoons, music sources, videos, and games. Since major portal sites distribute online news content free of charge to increase their traffics, customers have been accustomed to free news content; hence this makes online news providers more difficult to switch their policies on business models (i.e., monetization policy). As a result, most online news providers are highly dependent on the advertising business model, which can lead to increasing number of false, exaggerated, or sensational advertisements inside the news website to maximize their advertising revenue. To reduce this advertising dependencies, many online news providers had attempted to switch their 'free' readers to 'paid' users, but most of them failed. However, recently, some online news media have been successfully applying the Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) payment model, which allows readers to voluntarily pay fees for their favorite news content. These successful cases shed some lights to the managers of online news content provider regarding that the PWYW model can serve as an alternative business model. In this study, therefore, we collected 379 online news articles from Ohmynews.com that has been successfully employing the PWYW model, and analyzed the comparative importance of systematic attributes of online news content on readers' voluntary payment. More specifically, we derived the six systematic attributes (i.e., Type of Article Title, Image Stimulation, Article Readability, Article Type, Dominant Emotion, and Article-Image Similarity) and three or four levels within each attribute based on previous studies. Then, we conducted content analysis to measure five attributes except Article Readability attribute, measured by Flesch readability score. Before conducting main content analysis, the face reliabilities of chosen attributes were measured by three doctoral level researchers with 37 sample articles, and inter-coder reliabilities of the three coders were verified. Then, the main content analysis was conducted for two months from March 2017 with 379 online news articles. All 379 articles were reviewed by the same three coders, and 65 articles that showed inconsistency among coders were excluded before employing conjoint analysis. Finally, we examined the comparative importance of those six systematic attributes (Study 1), and levels within each of the six attributes (Study 2) through conjoint analysis with 314 online news articles. From the results of conjoint analysis, we found that Article Readability, Article-Image Similarity, and Type of Article Title are the most significant factors affecting online news readers' voluntary payment. First, it can be interpreted that if the level of readability of an online news article is in line with the readers' level of readership, the readers will voluntarily pay more. Second, the similarity between the content of the article and the image within it enables the readers to increase the information acceptance and to transmit the message of the article more effectively. Third, readers expect that the article title would reveal the content of the article, and the expectation influences the understanding and satisfaction of the article. Therefore, it is necessary to write an article with an appropriate readability level, and use images and title well matched with the content to make readers voluntarily pay more. We also examined the comparative importance of levels within each attribute in more details. Based on findings of two studies, two major and nine minor propositions are suggested for future empirical research. This study has academic implications in that it is one of the first studies applying both content analysis and conjoint analysis together to examine readers' voluntary payment behavior, rather than their intention to pay. In addition, online news content creators, providers, and managers could find some practical insights from this research in terms of how they should produce news content to make readers voluntarily pay more for their online news content.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.29-48
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• 2014

The recent keyword advertising does not reflect the individual customer searching pattern because it is focused on each keyword at the aggregate level. The purpose of this research is to observe processes of customer searching patterns. To be specific, individual deal-proneness is mainly concerned. This study incorporates location as a control variable. This paper examines the relationship between customers' searching patterns and probability of purchase. A customer searching session, which is the collection of sequence of keyword queries, is utilized as the unit of analysis. The degree of deal-proneness is measured using customer behavior which is revealed by customer searching keywords in the session. Deal-proneness measuring function calculates the discount of deal prone keyword leverage in accordance with customer searching order. Location searching specificity function is also calculated by the same logic. The analyzed data is narrowed down to the customer query session which has more than two keyword queries. The number of the data is 218,305 by session, which is derived from Internet advertising agency's (COMAS) advertisement managing data and the travel business advertisement revenue data from advertiser's. As a research result, there are three types of the deal-prone customer. At first, there is an unconditional active deal-proneness customer. It is the customer who has lower deal-proneness which means that he/she utilizes deal-prone keywords in the last phase. He/she starts searching a keyword like general ones and then finally purchased appropriate products by utilizing deal-prone keywords in the last time. Those two types of customers have the similar rates of purchase. However, the last type of the customer has middle deal-proneness; who utilizes deal-prone keywords in the middle of the process. This type of a customer closely gets into the information by employing deal-prone keywords but he/she could not find out appropriate alternative then would modify other keywords to look for other alternatives. That is the reason why the purchase probability in this case would be decreased Also, this research confirmed that there is a loyalty effect using location searching specificity. The customer who has higher trip loyalty for specificity location responds to selected promotion rather than general promotion. So, this customer has a lower probability to purchase.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.331-341
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• 2020

Recently the government has succeeded in shutting down the Illegal Copyrighted Websites by cracking down on the operators of the websites. But this only caused 'the Balloon Effect', similar websites were created and users shifted to the new websites. 'Follow the money' is drawing attention as a way to complement the effect of policies. It tracks the commercialization scheme and fund flows of the Illegal Copyrighted Websites and blocks the supply and publication of advertisements, which are the main source of revenue. This approach aims at self-closure of Illegal websites by blocking the revenue source. In this study, we have selected and analyzed overseas cases that adopted these measures. Many countries had different policies and campaigns, but three things are common: non-punishment measures, partnership based on voluntary participation, pursuing a variety of purposes other than protecting the copyright industry. In Korea, the reason public-private Partnerships was not properly established had been caused by the difference of views between them. Advertisers and agencies need to expand their awareness that illegal advertisements can have adverse effects such as brand image damage and enormous economic losses. Also campaigns and conferences related with the policy should be held to prevent copyright infringement through mutual understanding and cooperation.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.89-110
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• 2013

Affiliate marketing is classified as a type of online advertising, where merchants share a percentage of sales revenue generated by each customer, who visited the company's website via a content provider. Content provider, referred to as an affiliate, usually places an online advertisement at its website. For the past few years, there have been a lot of companies or individuals who participate in affiliate marketing. Generally speaking, most of them have websites and post the merchant's ads on their own websites. However, building and maintaining websites have some technology requirements. The widespread use of Social Network Service (SNS), especially microblog-based SNS such as Twitter and Sina Weibo, provides opportunities for individuals who want to be content providers of affiliate marketing. Since information spreads quickly on microblog-based SNS and the easy in targeting customers, it is both an effective and an efficient tool to do affiliate marketing. The relationship between a content provider and the potential customer, which is referred as "tie strength", is quite an important issue in such situation. This paper proved that service characteristics of the microblog-based SNS (security, community drivenness and navigability) and content quality all had positive influence on click-through intention, while tie strength played a moderating role. For the group with strong tie, tie strength is crucial in influencing click-through intention. While for the weak tie group, content quality was very important. Finally, we proposed some implications for both academics and practitioners.