The Biz of Coding

How Software firms like Adobe Systems Promote their “Experience Goods”

by Ujwal Tickoo on May 12th, 2006

This post continues from my two previous posts on Experience Goods and Rules for the Information Economy: Amazon and the Third Rule of Information Economy, Amazon’s Success as an Online Store — Marketing & Branding in Information Economy.

C) Inducing Trial through free offerings:

Information providers often have to help people understand the value of what they are offering.

Several online and offline magazines give free subscription. WSJ Online offers 15 day free subscription and Businessweek Online offers 4 free print issues for new subscribers. Amazon (AMZN), as I explained in my previous post provides preview of several pages of books on its online store.

Computer Software is very much an Experience Good. This is the reason that software product managers and engineers focus a lot on user experience, usage testing, user interface etc.

Several successful software programs like WinZip started and continue to be free — in their basic versions. WinZip Standard and Professional versions however come for $ 29.95 and $ 49.95 loaded with several features over the basic version. The Standard version for example allows users to compress files even more and automatically split large files — for easy transmission.

Not just small software firms but even leading software companies recognize the concerns consumers have in upgrading to new software versions or buying new software.

Adobe Systems (ADBE) , for example, provides downloads of 30 day free fully functional trial versions of Adobe software products like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Acrobat etc. to help in software trial and purchase.

To Continue…

POSTED IN: Information Economy, Network Economy, Strategy