The Effect of File sharing on Consumer’s Purchasing Pattern: A Survey Approach

Digital compression and distribution technologies influence the music industry in various ways. This paper investigates how consumer behavior is affected by the free music products on the Internet. Survey methodology was used to determine the respondents’ perceived likelihood of purchasing legitimate CDs depending on the free availability of the same music via a streaming service or downloading on the Internet. In the pre-study, several factors affecting consumer purchasing were identified based on the responses of 106 university students. In consideration of these factors, the paper investigated how the price and free music availability jointly affect a consumer’s willingness to buy. In addition, this paper examined how the effects of price and non-price factors such as rating of singer, preference for genre, number of songs on a CD, SES factors, and music consumption style may change in the “free” vs. “non-free” Internet availability conditions. The results showed that there was a weak pattern of interaction between price and free music availability, though the interaction effect was not significant. In the non-free Internet availability situation, price along with some other factors had significant effects on consumer purchasing patterns for some CDs, whereas in the free Internet availability situation, price had insignificant effects on a consumer’s willingness to purchase all twelve CDs used in the questionnaire. Instead, some non-price factors influenced consumer purchasing patterns. * Doctoral Student, College of Journalism and Communications, G035, Weimer Hall, P.O.Box 118400, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611-8400, (352)846-1060, email: [email protected]