Experience Me! The Impact of Content Sampling Strategies on the Marketing of Digital Entertainment Goods

Product sampling allows consumers to try out a small portion of a product for free. Uncertainty associated with consumption of information goods makes sampling useful for digital entertainment providers. Firms offer some programming for free to attract consumers to purchase a series of programs. We explore the effectiveness of content sampling for information goods using a dataset containing more than 17 million free previews and purchase observations on households from a digital entertainment firm that offers video-on-demand (VoD). Based on theories related to product sampling and information goods, we analyze the relationship between free previews and VoD purchases for series dramas. Households with premium subscription packages show more interest in VoD, which implies higher utility for TV viewing. We also explore household sampling and purchasing patterns for VoD series dramas. Implementation of sampling plays an important role in stimulating more purchases, but in different and more nuanced ways than we expected.