Title: How to discourage online music piracy

Authors: Hung-Chang Chiu, Yuh-May Lin, Monle Lee, Min-En Nieh, Hsiang-Chun Chen

Addresses: Institute of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, 101, Section 2, Kuang-Fu Road, Hsinchu, Taiwan 300, ROC. ' Department of Financial and Economic Law, National Chung Hsing University, 250 Kuo-Kuang Road, Taichung, Taiwan 402, ROC. ' School of Business and Economics, Indiana University South Bend, 1700 Mishawaka Avenue, South Bend, IN 46634, USA. ' Graduate Institute of Technology and Innovation Management, National Chung Hsing University, 250 Kuo-Kuang Road, Taichung, Taiwan 402, ROC. ' Graduate Institute of International Business, National Taiwan University, 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, Taiwan 106, ROC

Abstract: Recently, piracy emerged as the biggest obstacle confronting legitimate online music providers. To encourage customers to purchase music from authorised online sources, both antipirating and retention strategies must be effectively implemented. This study provides four generic retention strategies to encourage the purchase of legitimate online music: value-added product, low-price, legal action and technological protection. This paper also classifies online music users into two segments, legal and file-sharing, to provide additional managerial insights. This study proposes that value-added product, low-price, legal action and technological protection strategies all improve purchase intentions of legitimate online music. The value-added product and low-price strategy, which establish customers| attitudinal and behavioural loyalty, are more effective on file-sharing users than legal users. Both legal action and technological protection strategies, which create barriers and penalties for customer switching, have far greater impact on customer purchase intentions of legal users than file-sharing users.

Keywords: online music; music piracy; retention strategy; file sharing; anti-pirating strategy; value-added products; low prices; legal action; technological protection; purchase intentions; customer attitude; customer loyalty.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMED.2008.021192

International Journal of Management and Enterprise Development, 2008 Vol.5 No.6, pp.723 - 738

Published online: 09 Nov 2008 *

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