Study On The Effect Of Price Discount On Digital Content Consumption Behavior

The booming development of Internet has prompted the emergence of digital economy.The digital content industry has developed rapidly and a large number of digital content products have emerged,including videos,music,e-books and so on.Digital content products are different from daily consumables in that platforms need to keep track of how people use them after they’ve sold them.For consumers,digital content products are experience products.Participation and sensory experience are prerequisites for obtaining utility and benefits from products,so as to realize value co-creation.Few scholars have explored the behavioral consequences of price discount,a marketing factor,on consumers’ use of products after purchase.Therefore,this study aims to explore the effect of price discounts on money consumption and post-purchase time consumption.In this study,the data set of a leading digital reading platform in China was used to form 1244 sample data of e-book product dimension based on 25,766 user data.The empirical model was established and data analysis was carried out using Python and STATA.This study discussed the effect of price discount on money consumption and time consumption of digital content products,and focused on the mechanism of price discount on time consumption of digital content products based on the theory of price quality signal effect and sunk cost effect.Empirical results showed that while price discount promoted the sales of digital content products,it had a negative impact on the time consumption of consumers after purchase.Price discount reduced the reading time of readers on e-books.This study addressed an important but less studied topic-the effect of price discounting on post-purchase usage of digital content products.Although price discount has been extensively studied,there has been little research into the behavior of product use after purchase.By analyzing the payment and reading data of digital reading platform users,this study analyzed the purchasing and consumption behaviors of consumers.Compared with the questionnaire method,it is more objective,and introduced different product information and product types as moderating variables to analyze the degree of their effects.This study provide reference and management suggestions for merchants to better develop targeted discount strategies when conducting discount promotion activities.