Title: Pirates, mercenaries, scouts and saints: a segmentation approach to understanding digital downloading

Authors: Victor J. Massad; Brianna Risch; Joanne M. Tucker

Addresses: College of Business, Kutztown University, Department of Business Administration, Kutztown, PA 19530, USA ' College of Business, Kutztown University, Department of Business Administration, Kutztown, PA 19530, USA ' Grove College of Business, Grove Hall 125, Shippensburg, PA 17257, USA

Abstract: Previous studies have shown that the attitudinal predictor opportunism and the demographic predictor age are correlated to the phenomenon of illegal digital downloading, or digital pirating. A framework for understanding digital pirates based on these two constructs is developed. Internet users are classified into four groups - pirates, mercenaries, scouts and saints. Four hypotheses are proposed: 1) that there will be no significant gender differences between pirates and the remainder of internet users; 2) that there will be significant differences between mercenaries and the remainder; 3) that pirates will exhibit the lowest propensity to pay for digital material; 4) that saints will exhibit the greatest propensity to pay for digital material. The first of the hypotheses was not supported. The latter three hypotheses were supported. Each of the cohorts is profiled and implications are discussed.

Keywords: digital downloading; internet pirating; copyright infringement; opportunism; market segmentation; torrents; internet demographics; digital pirating; age; gender; illegal downloads; propensity to pay.

DOI: 10.1504/IJECRM.2013.056490

International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 2013 Vol.7 No.2, pp.87 - 97

Published online: 30 Jun 2014 *

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