• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.75-100
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• 2018

Mobile devices have become an important channel for news content usage in our daily life. However, online news content readers' resistance to online news monetization is more serious than other digital content businesses, such as webtoons, music sources, videos, and games. Since major portal sites distribute online news content free of charge to increase their traffics, customers have been accustomed to free news content; hence this makes online news providers more difficult to switch their policies on business models (i.e., monetization policy). As a result, most online news providers are highly dependent on the advertising business model, which can lead to increasing number of false, exaggerated, or sensational advertisements inside the news website to maximize their advertising revenue. To reduce this advertising dependencies, many online news providers had attempted to switch their 'free' readers to 'paid' users, but most of them failed. However, recently, some online news media have been successfully applying the Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) payment model, which allows readers to voluntarily pay fees for their favorite news content. These successful cases shed some lights to the managers of online news content provider regarding that the PWYW model can serve as an alternative business model. In this study, therefore, we collected 379 online news articles from Ohmynews.com that has been successfully employing the PWYW model, and analyzed the comparative importance of systematic attributes of online news content on readers' voluntary payment. More specifically, we derived the six systematic attributes (i.e., Type of Article Title, Image Stimulation, Article Readability, Article Type, Dominant Emotion, and Article-Image Similarity) and three or four levels within each attribute based on previous studies. Then, we conducted content analysis to measure five attributes except Article Readability attribute, measured by Flesch readability score. Before conducting main content analysis, the face reliabilities of chosen attributes were measured by three doctoral level researchers with 37 sample articles, and inter-coder reliabilities of the three coders were verified. Then, the main content analysis was conducted for two months from March 2017 with 379 online news articles. All 379 articles were reviewed by the same three coders, and 65 articles that showed inconsistency among coders were excluded before employing conjoint analysis. Finally, we examined the comparative importance of those six systematic attributes (Study 1), and levels within each of the six attributes (Study 2) through conjoint analysis with 314 online news articles. From the results of conjoint analysis, we found that Article Readability, Article-Image Similarity, and Type of Article Title are the most significant factors affecting online news readers' voluntary payment. First, it can be interpreted that if the level of readability of an online news article is in line with the readers' level of readership, the readers will voluntarily pay more. Second, the similarity between the content of the article and the image within it enables the readers to increase the information acceptance and to transmit the message of the article more effectively. Third, readers expect that the article title would reveal the content of the article, and the expectation influences the understanding and satisfaction of the article. Therefore, it is necessary to write an article with an appropriate readability level, and use images and title well matched with the content to make readers voluntarily pay more. We also examined the comparative importance of levels within each attribute in more details. Based on findings of two studies, two major and nine minor propositions are suggested for future empirical research. This study has academic implications in that it is one of the first studies applying both content analysis and conjoint analysis together to examine readers' voluntary payment behavior, rather than their intention to pay. In addition, online news content creators, providers, and managers could find some practical insights from this research in terms of how they should produce news content to make readers voluntarily pay more for their online news content.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.27-54
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• 2011

This research attempted to present the efficiency of culture marketing to the organizations producing culture-art products and to the companies utilizing art and suggest the practical viewpoints to the culture and art policy agencies. The methodology used was to take an in-depth look at the consumer value cognition and benefits of culture-art products in contemporary consumption culture from a social context by conducting a total of 12 Focus Group Interviews, consisting of 58 males and females in their 10s~50s who can represent culture-art product consumers. The culture-art products refer to the artist's spiritual, actual act of creating or to the end products with economic exchange value. They are also sense goods and merit goods that affect the mental state of consumers. By looking at culture-art products as consumer merit goods, this research examined consumer value cognition of culture-art products based on the characteristics culture-art products. As a result, this research determined that consumers view culture-art products largely as 'aesthetic and sensuous merit goods', 'actual and individual merit goods', and 'social public property'. As 'aesthetic and sensuous merit goods', culture-art products are considered as the products of an artist's creative activities; as 'social public property', culture-art products have a public value in terms of ownership; and as 'actual and individual merit goods', culture-art products act on the spirit and reality of a consumer in terms of consumption. As a result of analyzing the benefits of culture-art products based on the above-mentioned consumer value cognition, it was observed that the benefits of culture-art-product consumption are chiefly divided into 'aesthetic character-oriented', 'social relationships-oriented', and 'individual benefits-oriented' depending on how consumers see culture-art products. A 3-conceptional structures model was constructed according to the relationship between consumer value cognition of culture-art products and the benefits. This research revealed that consumers who pursue the aesthetic value or sense of beauty as the central reason experience culture-art products themselves, enjoy intellectual quests, and pursue their satisfaction by expressing affection for and interests in culture-art products. On the other hand, consumers who pursue social value as the central reason as a means of communication by perceiving culture-art products as a public property of society, pursue sympathy with people close to them through the symbolic power of culture-art product consumption or the joy of self-display. Consumers who perceive art products as spiritual and actual merit goods and pursue consumer value as a central reason want to express their own personality, develop themselves, and differentiate themselves or identify themselves with others in the context of social relations for the ultimate goal of living a happy and satisfied life while pursuing to satisfy imminent and actual necessities as emotional stability and rest. The fact that culture-art product benefits could vary according to how a consumer perceives them implies that consumer value cognition of culture-art products and their benefits significant affect consumers' decision in choosing and consuming various culture-art products. It turned out that such benefits from the consumption of culture-art products reflect the complex contemporary consumption culture of rational consumption, symbolic consumption, experiential consumption, and social reflective consumption. This research identified conceptional structures of consumer value cognition on culture-art products and benefits that can be used for studying and understanding culture-art products consumers who pursue a variety of consumption values. They can also be used by private companies in utilizing art, as well as by national agencies in enhancing the population's quality of life. However, since this research could only conceptually grasp consumer perception of culture-art products and reveal the dimension of classification due to its own limitations arising from characteristic investigation, quantitative data on the benefits of culture-art product consumers should be measured in future studies through a quantitative investigation, while using the value cognition of culture-art products and the individual characteristics of consumers as variables based on this research.