Remember that book you loved reading? How you felt when you opened it and started a new chapter? Or that one professor that used to talk so interestingly you could not not pay attention to him?
When you imagined these things, you probably thought of a physical book and a professor in a physical lecture room, not about an e-book or an online course, right?
Products like books – aside from required lecture books maybe – are usually categorized as hedonic or experiential goods; people purchase them for the pleasure they get from the product (Chen & Granitz, 2010). Also, people tend to attach more emotional value to physical experiential goods than the digitized versions of those products (Waheed, Kaur, Ain & Sanni, 2014). Nowadays digitized versions of a wide variety of products exist, called digital information goods (Goh & Bockstedt, 2013). To give an example: sure, you can purchase a Beatles album straight from iTunes as a birthday present for your Uncle, but wouldn’t he be so much happier if you would give it to him on vinyl – given your cool uncle has a record player, of course.
Now, the question here is: How can digitized goods provide just as much emotional value (if not more) as physical products?
Note that the question is not whether hedonic products should be digitized at all, because, of course, it is way more efficient to carry around 500 songs on your phone, instead of carrying them around on CD’s. So, when we look at efficiency, digitization is a big help. Also, selling information goods like these can be very beneficial for companies. Creating that first product might be expensive and takes some time, but creating the second version is just a matter of making a copy and, consequently, takes very little time and resources. In other words, marginal costs of information goods are very low, meaning companies can enjoy a big profit marge (Brynjolfsson & Bakos, 1998). However, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to be just as happy about digitized products as you are about physical ones? If this can be achieved, this could have major effects on companies still producing physical goods that can be digitized, think of DVD’s – which have already lost a huge chunk of market share because of Netflix, HBO, etc. – postcards and even schools may be at risk somewhere in the unforeseeable future.
One thing that can be done is to offer more customer value in the case of digitized products. For example, if you purchase that Beatles album – or any other album – through iTunes you get free extra’s such as little video fragments of behind the scenes footage. In this way, consumers get more value for their money, which might increase their happiness.
Although there is no solution to this problem yet, companies selling digitized hedonic/experiential products should try to get consumer happiness to the same level as consumers get from physical products in one way or another.
So, next time you’re thinking of sending someone an e-card, remember that they’ll probably be happier to see one on their doormat.
Sources
- Brynjolfsson, E. & Bakos, Y. (1998). Bundling Information Goods: Pricing, Profits and Efficiency. Management Science, 45(12), 1613 – 1630.
- Chen, S. & Granitz, N. (2010). Adoption, rejection, or convergence: Consumer attitudes toward book digitization. Journal of Business Research, 65(8), 1219 – 1225.
- Goh, K. H. & Bockstedt, J. C. (2013). The Framing Effects of Multipart Pricing on Consumer Purchasing Behavior of Customized Information Good Bundles. Information Systems Research, 24(2), 334 – 351.
- Waheed, M., Kaur, K., Ain, M. & Sanni, S. A. (2014). Emotional attachment and multidimensional self-efficacy: extension of diffusion theory in the context of eBook reader. Behaviour & Information Technology, 34(12), 1147 – 1159.
Interesting post Aleksandra. I definitely agree that there is a fundamental change happening whereby we are becoming more attached to digital products. One eery example is dating. In Japan, there is a popular home-device, similar to Amazon’s Alexa, except she offers companionship, asks you about your day, and she is projected to look like an Anime cartoon. It is called Gatebox, and is picking up in popularity among Japan’s lonely men. I am curious if having emotions towards a bot is something that will grow as the digitalization of our world continues. The movie ‘Her’ also touches on this subject in an interesting way.
Source:
http://fortune.com/2016/12/18/gatebox-virtual-assistant-japan/
Dear Shaffy, thank you for your reaction. I completely agree with you that there is an unusual thing happening here; humans – as living, breathing creatures – developing emotions towards non-living creatures. The thing is, that people develop different kind of emotions towards different kinds of products. For example: you feel differently towards a power drill (unless you really love power drilling) than towards a letter you received from a family member living somewhere far away. That is because the power drill performs a functional need: you need a hole in your wall. The letter evokes your emotions and you have a different kind of ‘relationship’ with it. This is especially the case with physical products, rather than digital ones. I think it is hard to ‘replicate’ that emotional feeling physical products evoke in the digital environment.
However, you do mention a very interesting example (I did not know Gatebox, thanks for introducing it!). It is crazy how digital/non-living products do somehow evoke emotions in human beings. I just wonder whether it is the same (or close to) emotions evoked by physical products and situations.
Very interesting blog post and comment. As a passionate book reader, I can relate to the concern of declining emotional value of digital goods. Often physical goods evoke special memories and positive emotions.
However, isn’t digitization disrupting how we ‘consume’ physical goods and services in many ways? Advantages of digital goods are that you are able to carry them around everywhere no matter how often you move. Of course, your all-time favourite book might lose its special status since it is just one book out of your digital library.
Concerning your comment Shaffy, there are chatbots imitating friendship which are used by thousands of people. In China hundreds of people actually fell in love with Microsoft’s Xiaoice chatbot – a chatbot as part of an artificial intelligence project. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cGOJ_Fcg7E
Did you know that some chatbots are evolved to the state that they actually as an actual person.
Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGcKu3SYx9A. A software developer used saved text messages and chats to build a chatbot which is able to communicate in natural language. It basically is like talking to a friend. She even took it further and programmed the chatbot to generate new content which the person never said using the vocabulary and tone of voice. It is a digital avatar that connects to family and friends and can act as oneself by generating new content which you actually never said but the chatbot uses your vocabulary and tone of voice. This way the chatbot is intended to capture your personality.
One can argue that chatbots are useful for companies when it comes to answering questions and performing customer support, thus making businesses more efficient. However, isn’t it sad how bots and AI threaten to replace human relationships and interaction?
Thank you for your comment, Isabel. I definitely agree with you that digitization is disrupting the way people consume these products. As I was saying in my reply to Shaffy, especially digitization of hedonic products ‘disrupts’ the emotional value people attach to those products. Digitization of instruction manuals seems (to me) like a good and efficient idea. However, digitization of my favorite book affects me more than the digitization of the instruction manual.
You make a valid point about the chatbots. I also think that companies could make excellent use of the chatbots. Not long ago I was in the “Plus” supermarket here in The Netherlands, and I saw that they had a little robot you could ask questions. So, for companies it is 1) efficient, because people could ask the bots where products are located for example, without having employees walk them to the right aisle, and 2) it is (still) considered to be ‘different’ and maybe even ‘cool’, so people (kids even more probably) might be attracted to the bots and it might create buzz and people will talk about it with their friends etc., turning more attention to the stores/companies using the bots. However, I agree with you that the use of the bots in personal environments is a bit disturbing. However, I think that is because we are used to having people around us. In Holland loneliness amongst the elderly is a very big problem. If chatbots could help counteract this even a little bit, I think it is a nice initiative. Nevertheless, placing the bots on the (nearly) same level as human romantic partners is hard to grasp, for me at least.
Thank you for this useful contribution Aleksandra. Briefly summarised, you mention that people are often emotionally attached to physical books, which prevents them from adopting digitised goods. You suggest that if this emotional attachment could be reduced, this would be beneficial for producers of digital goods. Personally, I believe that increasing emotional value of physical books to the average level currently attached to physical books will be extremely difficult, if even possible. Small changes can be made, for example by providing e-books as an alternative for physical books in certain situations where this is more convenient. However, an important point to notice is that adoption of digital goods is not only influenced by emotional value. Other factors influencing this process are for example consumer’s involvement with other ICT’s, innovativeness and relative (non-emotional) advantages of e-books over physical books. The first two factors are currently increasing, due to the fact that our society is being digitised. The last factors will be relatively easy for providers of digital goods to influence, and this might benefit them more than trying to change the emotional value of digital goods.
Thank you for your comment, Rosanne. Maybe I did not explain it well enough in the post, but I did not mean to say that people do not purchase digitized books because they are attached to physical books. I meant that the way people feel towards physical vs. digitized books (or any other digitized hedonic product) differs from each other. The main question of the article was how digitized goods could provide just as much (or even more if possible) emotional value as physical goods. Thus, I am not saying emotional attachment to physical goods should be reduced to the level of emotional attachment to digitized goods, but rather the other way around: digitized goods should evoke just as much emotional attachment as physical goods.
I completely agree with you that e-books and other digitized goods are purchased because of convenience reasons. It is much more efficient to carry 6 books on an e-reader than to carry those 6 in your bag. This is especially the case for products that people do not attach much emotional value to (course books maybe or instruction manuals).