What drives subscribing to premium in freemium services? A consumer value‐based view of differences between upgrading to and staying with premium

Abstract

Fostering the conversion of free users to premium subscribers and retaining those premium users are critical objectives for freemium service providers. Building on consumer value theory, we empirically examine the differences between basic and premium users in terms of the emotional, functional, social, epistemic, and economic values driving basic users' decisions to upgrade to premium subscriptions and premium users' decisions to retain their paid subscriptions. We employ enjoyment, intrusiveness of advertising in the free subscription, ubiquity, social connectivity, the discovery of new content, and the price value of the premium subscription as drivers of intentions and test our model using data from a leading digital content service that employs the freemium model. Our results show that enjoyment and price value of the premium subscription predict the intention to upgrade to premium, whereas the intention to retain the premium subscription is driven by ubiquity and the discovery of new content. Interestingly, social connectivity has no effect on the intention to upgrade but does have a small negative effect on the intention to retain the premium subscription. Contrary to our expectations, intrusiveness of advertising in the free subscription had a negative effect on the price value of the premium subscription. Collectively, our results imply that the intention to retain the premium subscription is influenced by attribute‐level value perceptions such as ubiquity, the discovery of new content, and social connectivity whereas the intention to upgrade is driven by benefits, ie, enjoyment and price value of the premium subscription.

What drives unverified information sharing and cyberchondria during the COVID-19 pandemic?

“…Second, developing a new construct is viewed as a major contribution in IS research (see Mäntymäki et al, 2020;Whetten, 1989). In this paper, we developed a new construct, namely unverified information sharing, applied to COVID-19, to capture how social media users may propagate fake news or misinformation without authenticating the information.…”

Prediksi Niat Penggunaan Aplikasi Dan Permainan Daring Freemium Versi Berbayar Dengan Menggunakan Model TPB

“…Jika dilihat dari sudut pandang operator layanan freemium, layanan versi premium adalah sumber pendapatan utama. Sedangkan, versi gratis adalah untuk menarik basis pengguna yang lebih besar dan mengarahkan pelanggan tersebut untuk menjadi pelanggan premium (Mäntymäki et al, 2020). Berdasarkan pembagian tersebut, terdapat dua kelompok pelanggan dengan standar pengalaman pengguna yang berbeda.…”

“…Berdasarkan pembagian tersebut, terdapat dua kelompok pelanggan dengan standar pengalaman pengguna yang berbeda. Pertama, pelanggan yang menggunakan layanan versi tidak berbayar, dan kedua adalah pelanggan yang menggunakan versi premium atau berbayar (Mäntymäki et al, 2020). Berdasarkan penjelasan tersebut, kami menyimpulkan bahwa pelanggan dapat menggunakan aplikasi versi tidak berbayar atau membeli aplikasi berbayar secara langsung tanpa mencoba versi tidak berbayar.…”

The Effects of Social Value, Value for Money, App Rating, and Enjoyment on the Intention to Purchase the Premium Service of the Spotify App

“…Enjoyment in the context of online content service is described as the fun or pleasure sourcing from the online content service experience, that is the extent to which activity of using an online content service is perceived to be enjoyable in its own right, apart from any performance consequences that may be anticipated [22]. A definition says that enjoyment is one of the outcomes of an experience-oriented product, other than fun, amusement, fantasy, arousal, and sensory stimulation [23]. In a hedonic system, enjoyment is known as the driving force for someone to use an app [24], while in the utilitarian system, usefulness is the driving force of the use of that app [25].…”