Credits: Writen by Ozgun Atasoy and Carey K. Morewedge
Every day, we interact with two kinds of goods. The first kind is acquired and shared instantly, is weightless, impervious to damage, easy to customize, and impossible to lose. Even a child can carry thousands of it at a time. The second kind requires travel to acquire or share, is difficult to alter, cumbersome, easily lost, and can be damaged in a myriad of ways. Only a few of its kind can be crammed into a single bag. Despite the many advantages of the first kind — digital goods — companies find again and again that people value and are willing to pay considerably more for the latter — their physical counterparts. Our research aims to explain this puzzling behavior.
Modern life has been transformed by the widespread digitization of many consumer goods, from books, to magazines, newspapers, music, movies, airplane tickets, and calculators. Digital photographs, first commercialized in 1990, are now taken more often than print photographs. Yet, despite the many advantageous features of digital goods, physical goods appear to retain greater allure. Print books are still the dominant format, Blu-ray and DVD sales continue to grow, as does demand for physical prints of digital photographs people already own.