Supplying Web 2.0: An empirical investigation of the drivers of consumer transmutation of culture-oriented digital information goods

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Abstract

This paper describes an empirical study of behaviors associated with consumers’ creative modification of digital information goods found in Web 2.0 and elsewhere. They are products of culture such as digital images, music, video, news and computer games. We will refer to them as “digital culture products”. How do consumers who transmute such products differ from those who do not, and from each other? This study develops and tests a theory of consumer behavior in transmuting digital culture products, separating consumers into different groups based on how and why they transmute. With our theory, we posit these groups as having differences of motivation, as measured by product involvement and innovativeness, and of ability as measured by computer skills. A survey instrument to collect data from Internet-capable computer users on the relevant constructs, and on their transmutation activities, is developed and distributed using a web-based survey hosting service. The data are used to test hypotheses that consumers’ enduring involvement and innovativeness are positively related to transmutation behaviors, and that computer self-efficacy moderates those relationships. The empirical results support the hypotheses that enduring involvement and innovativeness do motivate transmutation behavior. The data analysis also supports the existence of a moderating relationship of computer self-efficacy with respect to enduring involvement, but not of computer self-efficacy with respect to innovativeness. The findings further indicate that transmutation activities should be expected to impact Web 2.0-oriented companies, both incumbents and start-ups, as they make decisions about how to incorporate consumers into their business models not only as recipients of content, but also as its producers.

Section snippets

Introduction: the transmutation phenomenon

Youtube, blogs, MySpace – the Internet is packed with content posted by consumers and aggregated by websites which provide them with platforms for filtering and viewing this content. Where does this content come from? Some is entirely home-grown, but a significant portion consists of consumer-modified transmutations of pre-existing digital information goods: videos on Youtube recombine music tracks with television video, capture and re-encode entertainment broadcasts, or juxtapose news clips

Literature on digital culture products

Information goods generally are defined by Shapiro and Varian (1999) as “anything that can be digitized”, using examples which are experience goods such as books, films or recordings. Maass et al. (2007) supply a detailed taxonomy of digital information goods which includes “content-centered” goods such as product descriptions, reports, news, shows, music, books, blogs, and “multimedia objects”, as well as “service-centered” information goods such as weather services or financial services.

Theory and methodology

In order to begin the development of a theory in this context, it is necessary to characterize a wide variety of activities which all involve consumers’ post-purchase manipulation of digital culture products. The approach taken in Section 3.1 is to group the various activities according to their purpose, along a scale of increasing degree of alterations from the original. In Section 3.2 a theory of behavior based on ability, motivation, and opportunity is used to develop a proposed model of

Results

This section will first present the descriptive statistics on the main constructs for the independent variables, followed by a Cronbach’s alpha analysis demonstrating that the constructs are internally consistent, and a factor analysis of survey items to indicate validity of the instrument. Then, the scores of the Kirton Adaptation-Innovation responses will be analyzed for the presence of the expected factors, demonstrating that the “originality” factor (used to measure the creativity

Discussion of results

These results support the notion that involvement and originality both play a role in motivating transmutation behaviors. However, Levels I and II were not found to differ significantly for either involvement or originality scores. It may be that there is no true difference in these sub-populations to discover, that while Levels I and II may differ as definitions of categories of behavior, there are no corresponding differential categories of motivation in consumers. In that case, we would be

Implications and future research

The notion of Web 2.0 strategies is premised on significant, useful contributions from the online community of users, and in the case of sites which present entertainment-oriented multimedia content, relatively skillful and creative contributions. This study provides a first empirical profile of who the most fruitful content creators for such websites might be, and sheds light on how they make decisions about their manipulations of digital content.

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