ACCEPTING OR FIGHTING PIRACY: CAN FIRMS REDUCE PIRACY FOR DIGITAL MEDIA PRODUCTS BY OPTIMIZING THEIR MARKETING?

摘要

The challenge for the media industry is to find strategies to optimally compete with pirates. The major players in the media industry actively lobby via their associations MPAA and RIAA for strict copyright enforcements and stronger punishments of pirates. However, consumers (and pirates) argue that the offered products are not optimally designed to meet their preferences (Clement et al. 2012). The pressure to compete against pirates is high, especially with the advent of file sharing and, recently, locker services that allow users to efficiently and massively share their media files illegally (IFPI2011). These new technologies have substantial effects on consumer behavior (Papies et al. 2011; Bhattacharjee et al. 2007). Interestingly, prior research mainly focused on understanding piracy behavior and addressed the effects of digital lights management systems (DRM, Sinha et al. 2010), legal actions (Sinha and Mandel 2008), or free services on downloading intention (Gopal and Gupta 2010; Clementetal. 2012). However, the key question for the industry players remains whether and how firms should change their marketing strategies in order to better compete against pirates. Thus, should firms fight piracy by providing specific offers to piracy segments or should they simply accept a certain level of piracy because they will not be able to gain more business due to cannibaliza-tion effects?