I was looking for the song that Shakira sang at the Latin Grammys to confirm that I had identified the right song from the right album (Amazon's and CDNOW's previews didn't include samples of the song at all). Talk about creating a customer "barrier to purchase"!
While looking for the song, I discovered that MP3 swapping in the US are a drop in the bucket compared to Spanish language music MP3 swapping. I even found a site that was selling entire bootleg albums complete with online credit card ordering. I'd love to see the RIAA go after them down south! They have a different way of dealing with things than up here.
(BTW the song was "Oso asi" from "Donde Estan Los Ladrones?". It's got an awesome Spanish+Arabic sound with a killer beat: natch, she's Lebanese-Columbian, what lovely mixture! yum!)
The telephone studies describing consumer preferences for flat-rate over usage-blled have been out for some time and are also cited in discussions of behavioral finance. I've long thought this would be relevant to micropayment systems, as a similar economic decision exists.
The assumption is that micropayments are so small that no one will care. But this isn't true. There is still the floating anxiety and bother of "mentally counting" each minute (pun intended) purchase. Also related, if what you are purchasing with micropayments has clearly perceiveable "high value", such a system will likely be trivially accepted by users. If your prospective users do not clearly perceive value (whatever that means to them, not to you as a marketer), either due to the type of product offered or the way you've "positioned" your
product, micropayment economics will fail.
I suspect that micropayments haven't really taken off in part because this fundamental piece of psychology was never integrated into either the protocols or the business plans of those creating micropayment systems.
Slashdot Mirror
I was looking for the song that Shakira sang at the Latin Grammys to confirm that I had identified the right song from the right album (Amazon's and CDNOW's previews didn't include samples of the song at all). Talk about creating a customer "barrier to purchase"! While looking for the song, I discovered that MP3 swapping in the US are a drop in the bucket compared to Spanish language music MP3 swapping. I even found a site that was selling entire bootleg albums complete with online credit card ordering. I'd love to see the RIAA go after them down south! They have a different way of dealing with things than up here. (BTW the song was "Oso asi" from "Donde Estan Los Ladrones?". It's got an awesome Spanish+Arabic sound with a killer beat: natch, she's Lebanese-Columbian, what lovely mixture! yum!)
The assumption is that micropayments are so small that no one will care. But this isn't true. There is still the floating anxiety and bother of "mentally counting" each minute (pun intended) purchase. Also related, if what you are purchasing with micropayments has clearly perceiveable "high value", such a system will likely be trivially accepted by users. If your prospective users do not clearly perceive value (whatever that means to them, not to you as a marketer), either due to the type of product offered or the way you've "positioned" your product, micropayment economics will fail.
I suspect that micropayments haven't really taken off in part because this fundamental piece of psychology was never integrated into either the protocols or the business plans of those creating micropayment systems.