Most digital content distributed in information-goods platforms encounter the threat of online piracy. Strategic pricing, technology-based platform protection, and deterrent enforcement such as legal and moral measures are viewed as antidotes to piracy. We examine the effects of deterrent...

Providers of free-to-play games often gain revenue by monetizing players' playtime, e.g., through ingame advertising, and by selling premium module of the game. One emerging strategy to sell the premium module, known as the virtual selling strategy, is to set the module price based on an amount...

Online marketplaces are increasingly adopting innovative business models such as using paid advertising as a major revenue source. We explore the two popular advertising tools, sponsored search and social media endorsement, in attracting web traffic from online sellers' perspective. We estimate...

In this paper, we develop a framework to generally characterize the equilibrium trial and pricing strategies of oligopoly software market, when there exist competition, network effects (externalities), uncertainty on software functionality, network maintaining cost and compatibility issues. We...

Many software firms, especially mobile app providers, offer perpetually free basic products to users, but premiums are charged for access to the additional features or functionalities. While the free offering helps capture potential customers, it might cannibalize the sales of premium goods or...

Information goods providers adopt the freemium model to increase their user base and maximize their profits. However, a serious piracy problem cannibalizes the demand for legal goods and deeply harms firms' interests. We investigate the optimal pricing of information goods under the freemium...