Selling Bits: A Matter of Creating Consumer Value

Digital goods such as music are vulnerable to illegal use over the internet. Technology-driven IT solutions to protection are useful but limited. Instead, we suggest that incentives to legal forms of consumption can be constructed by redesigning how the e-business model for digital content creates consumer value. We present a general framework that enables a quantified utility analysis and clarifies what parameters, technological as well as market ones, influence consumer value. On this basis, we discuss several business scenarios that show how to make the value gap between legal and illegal offerings as large as possible. This analysis framework is part of our e3-valueT Mmethodology for e-business modelling and decision making in which business and IT considerations are integrated.