Demand for a whole host of products appears to be splitting into two camps, the price sensitive camp, and the risk averse camp. What other explanation can there be of the situation where you find people willing to pay for something that is on the net, just a “click” away for free?. ( I am ignoring those few who have yet to turn on a computer)
This is a relatively new paradigm that appears to be emerging as the net reduces the marginal cost of production and distribution of many products and services to virtually zero.
For free entails risk, whilst paying carries an implicit if not explicit promise of service and support, which is does not come for free.
The marketing challenge is to leverage the for free into something people will pay for. A new word, “Freemium” is appearing as people consider this challenge, Rupert Murdoch’s stated intention is to use the freemium model to get people to pay for what has been free, but I have yet to see the notion of “information integrity insurance” being used as a reason to charge for what has been free. The Wall St journal would be a great model to consider, as information integrity is a foundation of its value proposition.
