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Integrating Information Technology and Marketing to increase e-Book consumption

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Abstract

This research contributes to the interdisciplinary area of marketing and information systems by examining two different strategies to increasing e-book consumption. Information technologies have changed the culture of book purchasing, which provides an opportunity to examine the impact of print-book marketing strategies on e-books. Information technologies facilitate value cocreation, part of service-dominant logic. This research examined the influence of both a technology- and non-technology-based marketing strategy on consumers’ intention and decision to download and/or purchase e-books from an e-book sales platform. 192 participants completed browse-and-purchase tasks in two experimental conditions: with/without a technology-based free e-book preview; with/without a non-technology-based strategy of including a numbered time reference in an e-book title. The results indicated that providing free previews of e-books significantly improved participants’ purchase intentions and purchase behavior. This improvement was more marked for free e-books than for priced e-books. The results also indicate that including a time reference in an e-book title improves participants’ purchase intentions and purchase behavior. This finding was more significant for the leisure genre compared with the how-to genre.

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Acknowledgements

Hsiu-Li Liao and Su-Houn Liu would like to acknowledge the Start-Up Fund provided by the Ministry of Science and Technology (NSC 100-2410-H-033-003-). We would like to thank Prof. Jean A. Pratt’s helps and revises making the work stronger and clearer.

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  1. Information Management, Chung Yuan Christian University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, Republic of China

    Hsiu-Li Liao & Su-Houn Liu

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  1. Hsiu-Li Liao
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  2. Su-Houn Liu
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Correspondence to Hsiu-Li Liao.

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Liao, HL., Liu, SH. Integrating Information Technology and Marketing to increase e-Book consumption. Electron Commer Res 23, 137–153 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-022-09585-1

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