Economics of shareware: How do uncertainty and piracy affect shareware quality and brand premium?
Document Type
Article
Source of Publication
Decision Support Systems
Publication Date
2-1-2008
Abstract
Increased network speed has opened up new opportunities for developers to distribute their products as shareware through the Internet. This paper analyzes the interrelationships among key issues that are central to the software industry, including uncertainty, piracy, shareware quality and full version price. We show that customers' aversion to uncertainty of software quality tends to increase shareware quality while piracy tends to decrease it. Counter-intuitively, the perceived quality of the full version software or the trust towards the software developer does not affect the full version price and the profit of the firm when piracy is prevalent. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
DOI Link
ISSN
Publisher
Elsevier
Volume
44
Issue
3
First Page
580
Last Page
594
Disciplines
Business | Computer Sciences
Keywords
Piracy, Pricing, Shareware economics, Uncertainty, Versioning
Scopus ID
Recommended Citation
Hui, Wendy; Yoo, Byungjoon; and Tam, Kar Yan, "Economics of shareware: How do uncertainty and piracy affect shareware quality and brand premium?" (2008). All Works. 1373.
https://zuscholars.zu.ac.ae/works/1373
Indexed in Scopus
yes
Open Access
no