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Title:
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PRICE ELASTICITY OF DIGITAL SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION A FIELD EXPERIMENT |
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Author(s):
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Andreas W. Neumann |
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ISBN:
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ISSN: 1645-7641 |
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Editors:
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Pedro Isaías |
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Year:
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2007 |
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Edition:
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V V,2 |
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Keywords:
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Price elasticity, field experiment, digital scientific information, information market, document delivery
service. |
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Type:
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Journal Paper |
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First Page:
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1 |
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Last Page:
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11 |
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Language:
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English |
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Cover:
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Full Contents:
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click to dowload 
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Paper Abstract:
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Institutional flat rates via site license schemes or pay-per-view to individual customers are the dominant
pricing schemes for digital scientific information today. Fee-based digital document delivery services are
another way to supply the key resource of modern information societies. A market research of existing
pricing schemes at the different paths to information reveals huge price differences for comparable
goods. Uncertainty about the optimal price to charge seems to be ubiquitous. A digital document delivery
service for the student community was introduced at the University Library of Karlsruhe to collect real
market sales data for different prices over a period of five years. Journal articles that are not available
digitally through an institutional flat rate can be ordered to be scanned manually by the library staff and
downloaded in digital form later. The service was introduced especially for this experiment. Prices were
varied between 0.30 and 2.80 Euro to measure the price-demand curve; the customers were not informed
about the pricing experiment. The dataset consists of 2520 sales to 641 different customers within the
analysis period starting from the year 2002 and going to 2006. The price elasticity of demand is a linear
function already at low prices. Nonlinear price-demand effects for very low prices and prices near a
prohibitive price of 5.00 Euro are discussed. Existing connections between scientific education,
digitization efforts of paper journals and books, and optimal pricing of digital scientific information
markets are presented. |
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