Free offer, no buying?

What will happen to the sales figures of printed glossies when the same glossies also will be published online for free?


Internet can be considered an important new medium for reviewing cultural products. Besides websites linked to specific cultural genres such as theatres and museums, websites also emerged about already existing print media, such as regular newspapers. Now, the consumer can go online and read all articles for free. This new form of consuming can have positive but also negative effects on the regular printed media. I will discuss a couple of these effects.

Positive about this new development is that more people can get in touch with glossies for free. A lot of people do not want to pay for something they do not find interesting or do not know is interesting. If it is for free they might take a look after all. You do not know however whether it helps to make people actually buy glossies or subscribe themselves. If they like the online published glossies and they know what they can expect about it they might buy the printed version in the future.

It is also possible that most people do not want to pay anymore now that they can go online and read the glossy online for free. It is even possible that you lose some of your former consumers. Now that glossies are available online it kind of loses its prestige. People don’t need a subscription anymore. Magazine publishers will lose their consumers because there is a new way of getting articles of glossies for free. Consumers will most likely use this new option. The sales figures will drop and the organization has less revenue. On the long run this process will be bad for the printed media. This is a negative effect of online publishing.

Perhaps if magazine publishers would put part of the glossy online it would help to increase the attention. People then would like to see more and get interested. This way the sales figures might increase but with online publishing it is more likely the figures will decrease .

Sources:
Timmers, P. 1998. Business models for electronic markets. Electronic Markets Volume 8, issue 2, pages 3-8.

Informaworld
Checked 06 December 2007.

Benkler, Y. 2006. ´The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom´. New Haven: Yale University Press.