Monday, August 31, 2015

Patron-izing Journalism -- Beyond Paywalls, Meters, and Membership


[Update 8/16/17: A newer post, The Missing Piece of the Membership Puzzle -- Agreeing on Value for Each Member, updates some aspects of this, but this post remains highly relevant.]

Who will pay for journalism? The turbulent first decades of our new digital era suggest no one -- or at least too few. Commodity news is free and advertising values are collapsing. Those who seek to preserve serious journalism, who believe we need more than clickbait and the uncritical crowdsourcing of news, have been scrambling -- and they are actually finding many ways to get revenue (as summarized below). Nevertheless, it is hard to have conviction that even the best of them can be sufficient.
These are very turbulent times for journalism. But as Peter Drucker said, "The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, it is to act with yesterday's logic." What we need is a new logic. What I suggest is a new logic that draws synergy from all relevant revenue streams, in a way that leverages digital, to radically transform the relationship of journalists with their audiences.

 Customer or patron? 

Why be a customer? Why pay? The only way for journalism to survive in this new century is to refocus on a new logic for patronship -- getting readers to patronize content providers in the fullest sense: "to give money or support to." To find sustainable business models for journalism in a digital world, me must figure out how to find patrons (in this broad sense), and how to work with them so they are happy to contribute at sustainable levels.

 Newspapers, magazines, and news video services are struggling to find a logic that works. Paywalls, "soft" "metered" paywalls (a form of freemium), have been adopted by many publishers as a primary model (but avoided by many others). They seem to be just marginally working, even in the best of cases. But we have been looking at the trees, not seeing that there can be a new kind of forest.
  • Paywalls (soft or not) treat customers as faceless, undifferentiated cattle to be herded and milked. There is no invitation to be a patron, no personalization of the value proposition, even though individuals vary immensely in how they value and consume journalism. How can a single price possibly be right for all subscribers? 
  • Premium level subscriptions (such as Times Premier) have emerged as a supplementary strategy to try to get the most loyal patrons to pay more, based on the realization that some of them can be enticed to pay more. But here too, value propositions are not customized, 
  • Patronship at the high-end has always been a key support for journalism, from the rich owners of times past, to Bezos, Henry, and Omidyar today.  That is a nice contribution but it seems a shaky foundation for something so important to the public -- something that should be answerable only to its public. 
  • Crowdfunding seeks to move patronship to a wider base, but that seems fragmented and very limited as well.
  • Membership has become the latest hot topic (subject of a CUNY / Tow-Knight conference led by Jeff Jarvis on August 26 that I attended). This gets much closer to the core ideas of patronship. These efforts are a big step toward recognizing the need for more flexible targeting of value propositions, and addressing the many different kinds of value can be exchanged. This can include a very wide spectrum of offers to the audience(s) -- from added features, access to journalists, events, and bling, to pure contribution (drawing on the model of public radio and TV memberships). It also begins to recognize that value also flows from consumers to providers of journalism, the "reverse meter" suggested by Jeff Jarvis in 2011. It was evident at the conference that membership is a rich and promising area, already generating some success, but how to manage this almost too-rich variety of value propositions is a challenge.
    • This is not to forget that advertising remains an important source of revenue, even if increasingly limited. Many of the audience would pay to reduce that burden -- and some might accept more (to get more value, another reverse meter) -- but, again, there is little customization of such value propositions.
    The bigger picture

    We have a growing variety of revenue sources, but none a silver bullet. Where is the overarching synergy? What is tomorrow's logic?  

    I suggest the answer is to link this rich constellation of value propositions into a coherent, adaptive process -- one that seeks to find the right combination of value propositions for each individual, match them to their willingness to pay, and serve them in a customized bundle -- in a cooperative way that makes every regular customer into a true patron. If journalism has value, shouldn't those who are served by it recognize that value, and pay to sustain it? (As has been observed, "if you are not the customer, you are the product.")

    That can be done in many ways, and many are being tried and improved on, but I suggest the most effective way to apply the best methods in concert will be by drawing them into the FairPay architecture. This is touched on on the HBR Blog, and in more detail in this blog's Overview page. This architecture shapes a platform for applying all of the best methods in unison, to cooperatively find the right value proposition (and the right price) for each patron.

    Since I am co-organizer of an event on The Future of Journalism: “Why Should I Pay for Quality Content?” for MIT Enterprise Forum of NYC (October 27), this seems a good time to revisit my perspective on these issues, and to summarize how FairPay points the way to win-win solutions.

    Re-engineering the value proposition of journalism for the digital era

    The big picture idea is that FairPay refocuses journalism businesses on their relationship with their individual audience members -- with all the tools of the digital era -- to center on personalized, win-win value propositions. It builds this relationship on a cooperative understanding of individualized value that integrates all of the relevant elements on both sides of the value exchange. It seeks to enable a holistic view of value (and revenue) related to all aspects of the service that journalism provides -- basic subscriptions, premiums, membership options, perks, and any other kinds of offers, over all aspects of the value exchange.

    From the provider to the consumer, FairPay focuses on the total value of all kinds, as actually delivered to each particular consumer -- the value-in-use for exactly what is consumed and how (what items, how many, how intensely), including content, membership perks, etc. -- the value of that experience and potentially even the outcomes that result (enjoyment, appreciation, and even the results enabled -- did our advice improve your health or you stock market returns?). This can also include "soft" values, such as
    • service and support
    • participation, listening, and responsiveness (comments, access to the journalists) 
    • events and merchandise
    • the social value of investigative journalism, community services, and good corporate citizenship.
    From the consumer to the provider, FairPay considers not just monetary payments (subscription or membership fees, or pay-per-use), but other currencies. Thus it factors in credits (the "reverse meter") for
    • attention to advertising (including the possibility of customized levels of ad loads) and 
    • personal data that can be used or sold (again with possible customization)
    • the value of user-generated content
    • the value of viral promotion and leads
    • up-sell/cross-sell revenue potential
    • volunteer-provided services to the provider
    An ideal economic exchange would fully consider all of these aspects of value, and determine how to balance the exchange in a way that shared fairly the "economic surplus" (of value over cost) between the provider and the consumer -- as described in Harnessing the Demons of The Digital Economy. That post explains how this is not only an economic ideal, but how FairPay provides a practical process for getting consumers and providers to cooperate in approximating that ideal -- an adaptive engine for jointly evaluating the value actually received, and sharing fairly in the surplus.

    FairPay re-engineers how the providers of journalism interact with their audience members to deal with value, compensation, and sustainability, and creates a new balance of power. It recognizes that journalism co-creates value with its audience(s), and applies an adaptive method of co-pricing that (1) gives audience members the power to pay commensurate the value they perceive and can afford, while (2) retaining the power for providers to demand that be done fairly and sustainably.

    This approach draws support from
    • The latest thinking in marketing theory, in which journalism is recognized as being not a product but a service -- and in which services involve not a unidirectional transfer of value from a producer to a consumer, but a joint co-creation of value. 
    • Recent behavioral economics findings on how people will pay voluntarily for services, if asked in the right way.
    • The success of "value-based" pricing (or "performance-based" or "outcomes-based" models) for pricing industrial equipment used by companies like GE -- where a cooperative team of both producer and customer negotiate not a specific price, but a method for analyzing value as actually achieved by the customer in use, and then basing the price on that after the data is known. Just as the Internet of Things is making that more widely applicable, FairPay points to how a lightweight, heuristic variation on that theme can work for computer-mediated mass consumer markets.
    Making it work -- How to serve patrons and how to price for that

    This may seem very abstract and impractical, but the Overview page and the How FairPay Works box in the sidebar (at FairPayZone.com) explain more of how this can actually work, building on a simple balance of powers. Other posts on this blog explain the mechanics in detail, and how it can apply to journalism and similar content businesses.

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    A guide to  further details is at the end.
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------

    Why take the risk?

    Journalism is in a downward spiral, with a shrinking market of people willing to pay for it (at least on current terms). FairPay brings a robust and coherent strategy that applies across the spectrum of patronship:
    • For the long tail of pricing, FairPay promises to make it more affordable for the huge population of people who might pay something, but do not pay at all now because they will not pay as much as paywalls demand. FairPay's customized pricing can adapt to the lower, but still profitable, payments of the large population who consume lightly.
    • For the fat head of pricing, FairPay also promises to capture a larger "share of wallet" of those who are already paying. Unlike the complex and confusing value propositions of membership and other set-price premium subscriptions, FairPay can tailor rich value propositions to the desires of each patron, especially those willing to pay to get what they really want, not just some arbitrary, standard bundle.
    The result is a holistic view of value propositions, and how monetary payments fit in with other aspects of value, that enables the engine to individually manage a win-win relationship over time.  It motivates a very wide range of consumers of journalism to act as patrons, who provide an individualized mixture of money and other currencies of value that are a fair and sustainable exchange for what the consumer uses and values. It works as an adaptive, emergent process that identifies desired value propositions, delivers on them, tracks the results, and sets prices that patrons accept as fair and are happy to pay, Subscriptions, premiums, membership, and patronship fit together into an integrated engine of value creation and exchange, one that patrons can understand and fully buy into. This goes beyond the old invisible hand -- which is no longer operative for digital services -- to the more collaborative balance of an invisible handshake.

    While FairPay is very much aligned with the latest thinking in marketing and e-commerce, applying something so unconventional is not without risk. Established businesses will want to test FairPay first at the margins, in limited, controlled trials. This can be done in many areas, including premium tiers, acquisition offers, and retention offers (see the slide on “'Toe-in-the-water' examples for News Subscriptions" -- currently slide 18). Even if it does not work quite as expected, FairPay points us in the right direction -- that of constantly learning about realized value propositions and adapting to what each individual patron wants and values at any given time. 

    Trying it will lead to learning how to do it right -- how much power to give to your patrons, in what way. Really listening to our customers is now something that technology not only greatly facilitates, but requires us to do very well. It is not optional, something that can be neglected -- it is now central to the co-creation of journalism --and the business of journalism.

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    [Addendum 9/3/15 -- Aggregation and FairPay]  Until I do a fuller post on this soon [Update: see the "Additional posts" just below, especially "Risk -Free..." and "The Case Against..."], here are some quick notes about news aggregation and how FairPay enhances that:

    Aggregation is valuable to make it easy for consumers to access journalism from varied sources. Blendle has gotten much recent attention, and the proposal for The Internet Trust Exchange seems very promising. These approaches generally rely on micropayments to address varying levels of usage. Micropayments have had a troubled history (as Clay Shirky summarized long ago), but they do partially address the challenge of linking price to value when usage varies widely.

    FairPay is very applicable to use by aggregators, and it addresses the problems of micropayments directly, so that consumers need not fear the ticking meter, as explained my posts on "post-bundling" (focused on TV but also applies to journalism) and on “all you can eat” subscriptions. Post-bundling builds in volume discounts after the fact. With full FairPay, these volume discounts are soft and forgiving suggestions that are not binding, so consumers need have little anxiety about usage.

    Even without the more radical aspects of FairPay, if we do nothing more than apply pre-set discount rates from a provider-specified discount schedule, there is still a significant benefit. Why should my incremental cost for one more article be very low (actually zero) if I am an average subscriber on an unlimited usage subscription plan, but high if I have the same activity level using a micropayment system? The incremental charge for an added article should be very small (once beyond some minimal level of volume). The reason consumers hate micropayments is this constantly ticking meter – if we cannot make the meter go away, we must at least make it tick very softly.

    (Blendle does take one smart step in the direction of the participative nature of FairPay, by making it easy to demand an instant refund if not satisfied with an article.)

    -----------------------

    Additional posts relevant to journalism include:
    ...and much more on the More Details page.

    ---
    For a full introduction to FairPay see the Overview and the sidebar on How FairPay Works (just to the right, if reading this at FairPayZone.com). There is also a guide to More Details (including links to a video).

    Even better, read my highly praised new book: FairPay: Adaptively Win-Win Customer Relationships.

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    Guide to More about the FairPay Strategy -- For Journalism

    This is a supplement to the post just above, Patron-izing Journalism -- Beyond Paywalls, Meters, and Membership (and others, to be updated as needed).

    The Overview page (and the How FairPay works box in the sidebar) explain more of how FairPay works, building on a simple balance of powers. Other posts on this blog explain the mechanics in detail, and how it can apply to journalism and similar content businesses. Here is a guide to the posts most relevant to journalism (but for fuller background, see the More Details page).

    On FairPay as it applies to journalism:
    On comparisons between FairPay and conventional paywalls and freemium more generally:
    On volume discounting for aggregators and micropayments (writing about TV, but applicable to journalism):


    On why this idea is is just crazy enough to work:

     Also see the current slide deck, and the MIT Enterprise Forum presentation video.
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    Friday, August 7, 2015

    Post-Bundling -- Packaging Better TV/Video Value Propositions with 20-20 Hindsight


    [SEE UPDATES AT END 
    WSJ report on cost, viewership,
    Disney's ESPN moving in this direction?
    "Risk-Free" Subscriptions to The Celestial Jukebox?]

    The increasing shift from bundles of TV channels to Over the Top (OTT) and "a la carte" -- or at least "skinny bundles" or re-configurable bundles -- has raised cheers and fears -- and now a broad stock market decline -- but I suggest we should be thinking about a different kind of "post-bundling" future.

    The answer is for bundles to become dynamic, and on-demand -- not post-bundling as in after bundles go away, but post-bundling as in defining bundles after the viewing. Alfalfa, one of "Our Gang" comedies' "Little Rascals" had the answer in 1936: "Pay As You Exit."

    This may seem strange, but think about it. What sense does it make for me to choose ahead of time what channels I want to be able to watch in a given month? Does Spotify ask me to choose what record labels I will want to listen to? How would I know?

    This also bears on the broader migration from pay TV networks on cable and satellite, to OTT services like Netflix, as given new immediacy by this week's market sell-off of traditional TV companies. Still more broadly, this idea of post-pricing and post-bundling can be beneficial for almost any kind of content aggregation, as expanded on below.

    What I propose is that TV/video distributors let viewers select a special post-bundled plan that offers "run of house" access to all available programming, and then applies bundled package rate discounts to that month's viewing -- after the viewer household has made its choices, program by program. Note that this differs from simple "a la carte" which charges a non-discounted rate for a given channel or program. (It has been suggested that a la carte will actually raise costs to consumers, but that does not reflect the idea that a sensible a la carte plan should include package discounts.*) It also differs from skinny or changeable bundles, which still must be pre-set in advance, even if easily changed from month to month. The idea is to apply quantity discounts, much like in current bundling, but do it in a way that lets viewers choose what to watch with a minimum of constraints.

    Such a scheme can give viewers full choice, match that with appropriate levels of billing, and open up a whole world of programming that has been walled off. It may hurt some programmers who have gotten a monopoly benefit by locking in a channel slot, but will help programmers who are able to find a public, without being arbitrarily gated by the distribution system.

    This can be done with conventional pricing methods, but can be far more effective with the more flexible, value-based FairPay model described in this blog, as explained further below.

    Busting the dam of bundling

    Channel bundling is a historical accident, based on the fact the cable and satellite TV distribution systems could only carry a limited number of channels, and had no on-demand capability. The distributor had to allocate those channels well in advance to match demand. Furthermore, it was impractical to charge consumers based on programs watched, so prices were for unlimited viewing of a bundle of channels.  Since different households had different viewing habits and budgets, a range of bundles were offered at different price levels, and with some flexibility as to which channels were in the bundle.

    None of that makes sense in our new world of Internet-based TV, where any program can be provided on demand. It remains a knotty problem for the economics of distributors and TV programming networks, but that too shall pass. They have resisted fiercely, but the dam seems to be breaking as a growing list of incumbent players test the waters or consider it.

    Similar issues apply in a somewhat different form to OTT SVOD "channels" like Netflix and Hulu -- see my post "Beyond the Deadweight Loss of 'All You Can Eat' Subscriptions." Hints at the turbulence resulting from the busting of the dam, even for these OTT services, is provided in a VideoNuze article, "Why SVOD Services Are At Risk Of Being Downgraded by Consumers to Transactional VOD," showing how our current business models just do not make sense, and concluding:
    All of this underscores how uncertain things are for everyone in the TV and video ecosystem. In our Uber-crazed world, consumers are being trained to expect services on-demand and pay only for what is valued and used. Continuously fine-tuning their video services for those actually being watched will become the norm, a huge departure from the traditionally inert world of pay-TV subscriptions. [emphasis added]
    Simple Post-bundling

    The idea is simple. Let viewers pay for what they use, and do it in a sensible way that corresponds to the value they get. Current bundles (regular or skinny) do not do that, a la carte does not do that (not without discounts), and flat-rate SVOD does not do that. Viewing is irregular and unpredictable -- the only way to determine its value is after it is logged.

    Instead of selecting a bundle from a menu beforehand, we need to be able to consume dim sum-syle, and then see what we used, and then price that with an aggressive discount schedule (unlike simple dim sum). A simplistic un-discounted dim sum at a la carte prices would be overpriced, and consumers will fear running up unexpectedly high charges. But it is easy to do better, with discount tiers for various levels of viewing, and for various mixes of premium content.
    • Pricing should factor in not only which channels were viewed, but how many shows (and maybe even which ones). 
    • Tiered plans could give prices similar to current bundles, but with the flexibility to dynamically alter the bundle. 
    • Usage factors could reasonably be set so a bundle of many lightly viewed channels might cost no more than a bundle of a few heavily viewed channels. 
    • A degree of usage related pricing would better track to value.  That could limit the cord-cutting of light viewers, and obtain fair increases in revenue from heavy viewers (with price caps to maintain affordability). 
    • Consumers could be alerted when they approach various budget thresholds, so they need not fear nasty surprises. 
    FairPay post-bundling

    Even greater tracking to value -- and consumer friendliness -- can be obtained with the FairPay cooperative pricing process (see overview). This provides greater flexibility in matching the value proposition to the consumer, and in protecting the consumer from pricing shocks to their budget.
    • With FairPay, the distributor can propose prices for the past month based on a post-bundling discount schedule, but the consumer has leeway to soften the effect of spikes due to high usage (in terms of number or type of programs viewed). 
    • The distributor balances this consumer power by determining whether the consumer is being fair over the life of the relationship, and the ability to revoke the FairPay privilege of those who are consistently not fair enough, sending them back to conventional set-pricing plans for their future viewing. 
    • Since there is little actual cost to short periods of unfairly low pricing, this serves to grow a larger and more loyal customer base, while weeding out those found not to pay fairly for the value they receive.
    Why subscribe to channels?

    As the VideoNuze article points out, subscribing to channels makes no sense in an on-demand world. This actually applies to both cable channels and OTT services, since either way, a la carte pricing threatens their survival.
    • Traditionally, channels got viewer revenue by being packaged in cable/satellite systems. Post-bundling can readily apply there, administered by the distributor. Some long tail channels that enjoyed subsidies in excess of their value will have to retarget their production models, but those that had no channel slots could find new life in a more open post-bundling world.
    • For OTT, free-standing long tail services will find it hard to justify $5-10 per month from more than a small cadre of dedicated viewers. But aggregators like Netflix and Hulu can make them accessible to an entire world of viewers. 
    • Even high-end channels will find the going tough. Is CBS really worth $5.99/month? To some maybe, but to most people, probably not -- not once every other channel tries to get a fixed slice of our wallet.
    • And even Netflix should move on from its one-size-fits-all model. Holding its fees to a set $8.99/month means it cannot offer much premium content (nor can it appeal to those on very low budgets) -- sooner or later that inflexibility will become a real problem -- and the spotty availability of prime movies already is a problem. With flexible post-bundling, Netflix could afford to offer all of CBS, HBO, ESPN, etc., and a full catalog of movies. Netflix should be the Spotify of video!  

    The very idea of a long tail channel becomes questionable -- their curation model must shift from a channel (24 hours of content) to a brand (a continuing supply of desirable content, maybe less continuous, but well curated).

    Content wants to be free  ...as in free speech, not free beer

    This is the whole new value proposition of the Internet age -- its an "inter-network," remember! Content providers keep trying to wall-off their content (in "walled gardens"), but the manifest destiny of the Internet keeps breaking those walls down. Post-bundling is the pricing model for the Internet age, the age of the Celestial Jukebox. Why can't we access anything we think we will value, and then pay a fair price for whatever that turned out to be? This obviously applies to music (Spotify) and why not news, magazines, books, etc. An earlier post explained how a similar form of post-bundling could expand the market for travel guides, such as when taking a multi-country cruise to one city (=program) in each of several countries that were each covered in different guidebooks (=channels).

    The Celestial TV Jukebox

    It is time for TV/video providers to embrace the new consumer-driven on-demand world. I don't care if I watch my programs from CBS or HBO or Showtime or Netflix -- I care about watching specific programs. Channels are no longer "channels." They are simply content brands that I may come to have some interest and trust in. Why should I buy a "channel" and pay for programs I don't watch?

    It is time to think about the answer Alfalfa found: "Pay As You Exit" -- bundle in arrears -- post-bundle. Finding the right way to do that will take some experimentation, and be disruptive to the incumbent networks and distributors, but the sooner we get started, the sooner we will find our way out of the wilderness to reach the land of milk and honey. It seems clear that some of the incumbents have begun to take this sea change seriously, and this week's wake-up call in the stock market adds evidence that we are approaching an inflection point.

    [More on post-pricing and value-based strategies in this newer post: Finding Value in The Subscription Economy]

    ====================================
    *The analysis of a la carte pricing in the Barro NYTimes article, Irwin's follow-up, and in Wikipedia, seems flawed not only by ignoring the role of volume discounting, but also by assuming that the technology of pay TV distribution will continue unchanged. Barro says that channelized distribution argues for bundles:
    Think of it this way: If I put my bag in an overhead luggage bin, you can’t put your bag in the same spot, so it makes sense to charge me personally for my use. But if I watch Bravo, that doesn’t stop anyone else from watching the same show. When a good is “nonrivalrous” like a cable signal, giving it to me doesn’t stop anyone else from using it or add production costs at the margin. In those cases, it can make sense to throw lots of stuff into one package, whether or not I’ll actually use it.
    But that is obsolete technology. It may take time to change over, but cable operators already send a mix of TV channels along with a separate Internet stream down the same pipe to our cable modems -- that can carry any channels desired, as it now does for OTT services like Netflix. (Even the "cable TV" channels now use Internet Protocol in their dedicated channel slots.) As I pointed out in a 2006 post, cable operators can shift capacity between these pipes, and they continue to gradually increase the capacity of the Internet pipe. With some simple equipment changes their plant can shift to all IPTV, with no fixed channels. (Doing that system-wide will take some time and money, but not that much.) So the technical reason that made bundling economical is now disappearing.

    The skeptics also point to the psychic cost of being nickel-and-dimed, but there are ways to counter that as well. I suggest that post bundling goes a long way toward softening that, and the even softer post-bundling of FairPay makes that even more comfortable.

    As to the more fundamental economics, a recent WSJ article puts it plainly: "Selling packets of channels to subscribers once made sense, but not so much anymore." It makes even less sense once you think about post-bundled packaging discounts.

    ====================================

    [UPDATE 4/2/19:  See this generalization and expansion, 
    "Risk-Free" Subscriptions to The Celestial Jukebox?

     [UPDATE 8/30/18: The Information reports on "AT&T's Plans for Changing TV"]

     The Information published a very interesting interview with AT&T Communications CEO John Donovan that shows movement toward the more value-based pricing that I am suggesting. I commented there:
    Looks like it takes a telcom guy to realize the TV industry biz model has no clothes!
    "The existing television business is hugely lucrative because channel owners get paid regardless of who watches." The telcom industry has long known that flat-rate subscriptions are economically inefficient for everyone, and consumers can be happier with usage based models when done with "the customer value proposition" in mind.
    I don't agree that mid-range bundles need to be ad-subsidized if they are smartly usage based (all levels could be, if desired to reduce costs -- or not). What Donovan calls "engagement pricing" I would view as volume-discounted usage pricing, and would design pricing to map to the value of whatever usage level that is. To do that, apply what I call "post-bundling" -- let the user watch whatever they want, and price it based on what they actually watched -- with a discounted price that corresponds to that specific mass-customized bundle -- after the distributor and the customer both know just what it is for that month. Details are in my post, “Post-Bundling – Packaging Better TV/Video Value Propositions with 20-20 Hindsight” [this post]
    ---
    [UPDATE 3/22/17:  WSJ report on cost, viewership]

    This perverse economics of TV channel-based models for costing and pricing continues to grow as a problem for both legacy cable businesses and upstart OTT providers -- and the content providers who supply them. Today's WSJ article title and subtitle drive this home: "Small Cable Channels You Pay for—but Don’t Watch—Are Dying. But don’t expect your bill to decrease as networks go away."

    This report points out how dramatically the cost per viewer varies. with rarely-watched channels like Fox Sports 2 and MTV Classic costing many thousands of dollars per year per viewing household, compared to a median of $699 (and of course the more highly viewed cost outlier, ESPN at $3,885, for its barely over 2 million viewers). Some of the channels are nothing but reruns! What a waste! Some channels have made a killing on this, but it is time the industry got its house in order, and moved on to provide real value at a fair price.

    There is a constant drumbeat of news reports on the decline of pay-TV bundles, and of the difficulties faced by the growing number of skinny bundles.

    When will the industry move beyond all of these silly bundles? We don't need no stinking bundles! What we need is value-based pricing for what customers actually watch.

     [More Updates:

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    Friday, July 24, 2015

    The Naples Forum on Service -- Co-Creation of Value, and FairPay as Co-Pricing


    The presentation deck is online:
    Co-Pricing: Co-Creating Customer Value Through Dynamic Value Propositions

    I presented the concepts of FairPay -- in collaboration with two prominent professors of marketing -- to international leaders in an emerging branch of marketing theory at the Naples Forum on Service on June 11th. It was very encouraging to see how the work I have done from a pragmatic, non-academic perspective resonates with those at the leading edge of theory.

    This 5th Naples Forum on Service is dedicated to the areas of Service Science, Service-Dominant Logic (in contrast to traditional Goods-Dominant Logic), and Network Theory, which all relate to emerging recognition that business is really about the "co-creation of value" by consumers, service providers, and other "actors," and that the production and sale of goods (which provide "value-in-use") is just one aspect of this larger concept of service. This has become a focus not only in academia, but in forward-thinking companies like IBM.

    FairPay and Co-Pricing

    My collaboration with Adrian Payne and Pennie Frow began when I contacted Adrian about his pioneering book on Relationship Marketing, with the idea that FairPay was very aligned with his thinking.  That led to discussions of his more recent work on business as co-creation (see Strategic Customer Management by Adrian and Pennie), and how that involves many co-creation activities, including co-pricing.  The theoretical ideas of the co-pricing aspect have not yet been well developed, partly because examples of co-pricing (like value or outcomes-based pricing, and pay what you want) have been limited in applicability relative to other, more studied, aspects of co-creation. 

    We think FairPay has immediate potential to radically change business practices in a way that puts a powerful new form of co-pricing at the forefront of digital content businesses (as described throughout this blog).  Likely initial applications are for digital offerings to consumers in markets such as journalism, e-books, music, video and other content, as well as games and other apps -- both directly between service providers and consumers, and via aggregator/distributor platforms. 

    The slides from our presentation are now available on online, and the abstract is now published in the book of abstracts (page 51).

    Research Directions

    My experience at The Forum reinforced my personal view that FairPay (or a variation on its theme) will not only change a wide swath of business, but will also change the theory of marketing and economics more broadly. My work on FairPay highlights how current practices in pricing fail to correlate well to value-in-use -- and it is value-in-use that is at the core of our markets (whether we recognize it or not). Whether in practice, or just as a thought experiment, thinking more about practical ways to make prices better correlate to value-in-use (and to view that over relationships, not just transactions) will enable us to change how our economy works, and very much for the better for all.

    Collaborators?

    Adrian, Pennie, and I have started on a more formal paper -- and we seek other collaborators who can help us do field trials of FairPay.  This could be an unusual opportunity to do research that not only advances theory, but potentially gains wide recognition from managers and the general public -- by solving urgent problems in finding good business models for the rapidly evolving digital space. (If you have interest in assisting, or suggestions of those who might, please contact me: fairpay [at] teleshuttle [dot] com.)
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    Tuesday, May 19, 2015

    An Invisible Handshake for The Digital Wealth of Nations

    It is time to replace the venerable "invisible hand" of Adam Smith with something new and more suited to the strange and challenging nature of digital products. Think instead of an "invisible handshake," that draws producers and consumers into a more cooperative, balanced, and productive relationship. It takes a handshake, because digital is a post-scarcity economics. What matters here is not a balance of demand and finite supply over a population of producers and consumers in a single market -- but a compatible understanding of value between individual pairs of producers and consumers who can act without that producer constraint.

    Let's indulge in some armchair economics to explore some big-picture ideas derived from previous posts.  This draws especially on the prior post -- about my thought experiment of an all-knowing economic demon, that leads to the idea of an invisible handshake, as replacing the invisible hand.

     (This sequel is best understood after reading that.)

    I suggest a kinder, gentler kind of scarcity. Some scarcity is unavoidable, so our solution is not the extreme peer-to-peer "economics of abundance" that some now advocate -- with its limited ability to motivate and sustain serious production of value.  The solution is to re-imagine the socio-economic contract between consumers and the producers that create value for them, to ensure a business model for producers. To maximize the value produced, and the entrepreneurial creativity, we need to motivate organizations that are selfishly driven by a desire for profit. I suggest a new kind of market that rewards the production of intangible stuff, based on a this new socio-economic contract -- neither the limited motivational power of pure altruism, nor the deadweight loss of artificial scarcity. And I suggest that this new economy can evolve from where we are, starting now, with the FairPay architecture outlined in this blog.

    Allocating scarce resources with the invisible hand

    The beauty of the Smith's invisible hand is that it set prices in a way that worked not only at a micro level, but also as a basis for an allocation of resources for society at large. The whole edifice of market economics has been based upon this.

    But now the digital world creates strange new rules, at least in that special portion of our markets.  So then, for the digital domain, what now?
    • We now have freemium and other new models, but do they have any real economic rationale? Do they tell us how to allocate resources in a way that is good and efficient for individual producers and consumers, and across society? 
    • Many producers rely on some form of artificial scarcity as a way to sustain revenues, but put the accent on artificial -- this has no fundamental basis, and creates no balance or fairness in resource allocation,  "The inefficiency associated with artificial scarcity is formally known as a deadweight loss" (Wikipedia article on artificial scarcity),  This may help keep producers solvent, but is fundamentally very hit or miss.
    • We also have the sharing economy, that recognizes digital abundance with its emphasis on collaboration and open-source, but with questions of efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability at scale. 
    Can we do better?
    The core challenge of the economics of real goods and services is the allocation of limited resources: physical resources, labor, and capital. As Adam Smith said in 1776 in The Wealth of Nations, "...price...is regulated by the proportion between the quantity...brought to market, and the demand of those...willing to pay...." Smith went on to describe how "...he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. ...By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it."  So in the face of scarcity across a market, prices are set by the invisible hand to allocate the supply where it is most wanted. Hayek expanded on Smith to argue that an economy needs prices as the only effective way to signal how resources should be allocated. Debate on how well this works for society continues, but it is widely recognized that it works to build wealth. Is there something to replace that in the digital world?

    An invisible handshake -- allocating share of wallet in a post-scarcity digital economy

    I propose doing allocation in digital markets with an invisible handshake, because the game changes without scarcity of supply. What matters is no longer a dance of a market as a whole at a given point in time, but a dance of each consumer with each producer over time. So what should determine price?
    • Each producer can provide as much as is desired by each consumer. There is no inherent supply constraint -- all that matters is whether the compensation from that consumer satisfies that producer. 
    • Prices for different consumers need not bear any relationship. What does it matter if some pay more and some pay less? Maybe that depends on how much they want to use, what value they get, and how able they are to pay. We are conditioned to think price discrimination is unfair (and sometimes illegal), but that is true only when unilaterally enforced by excess producer power, not if done for reasons acceptable to consumers. 
    The new allocation is not one of supply, but of share of wallet. If each consumer deals with a market full of suppliers for all of their digital products and services, the relevant scarcity is of their wallet -- how much can I spend on all of my digital desires, and how do I split that among my providers?
    • If I negotiate over time, in "dialogs about value," to share the economic surplus of my digital purchases, I am forced to allocate my spending within some digital budget, across all of my suppliers. I can do that any way I wish (to the extent that each supplier agrees to permit).
    • If all consumers do that, then all suppliers get their fair share of all of the wallets for all of their consumers.  They sell as much as their aggregate market population desires, at a sum of prices that is the maximum each market particpant is comfortable allocating.  
    • Given a scarcity of nothing but wallet, what works for each individual pair in the market leads to a result for all pairs that approximates a market-wide optimum.* 
    So, like the invisible hand, the invisible handshakes between each of the individual pairs leads indirectly to a socially beneficial allocation. Like the invisible hand, it refers to an emergent process that by seeking local solutions, leads to globally optimal solutions.
    • The invisible hand applies external market-wide forces (supply vs. demand) to producers and consumers at a given point in time (actually a short interval), It pushes them together to a market price. That pricing process indirectly leads to an approximately optimal distribution of scarce supply resources.
    • The invisible handshake is driven by an agreement between individual consumers and producers to seek a mutually beneficial relationship. That binds them in an emergent process that generates prices over the course of the relationship, and indirectly allocates the wallet share of each participating consumer to demand as much digital wealth as each is willing to pay for -- at prices that work for each of them individually -- to compensate producers for producing as much as each one -- and thus the total population -- values. 
    Thus the handshake is essentially a moral contract between the individual parties. That may sound utopian, but as outlined in the prior post and elsewhere in this blog, it is a moral contract with teeth. There are strong practical incentives to adhere -- and data that can be applied to help verify adherence. (This is the process I call FairPay, as described throughout this blog -- see sidebar.)
    • Digital products and services can be instrumented to generate detailed usage data that correlates to the actual value received.
    • Both parties participate in ongoing dialogs about value, which add subjective insight, but still can be partially validated by the usage data.
    • Based on these dialogs, the producer extends pricing "credit" to the consumer. If the consumer abuses this credit, they get less credit, and lose some or all of the ongoing privileges of the handshake.
    • This process generates consumer reputation ratings for fairness with each producer.  Since a good reputation rating has benefits (much like a credit rating), consumers will seek to maintain it.
    It is this balance of forces -- the subject of the handshake -- that governs the allocation of wallet (in an approximation of the wisdom of the pricing demon).** Different producers can manage their own policies to make their handshakes very strict and demanding, or more loose and forgiving. Different segments of the population may play the game more or less fairly and honestly. But the process will adapt, and find workable relationships for most segments of the market. (And conventional pricing can be applied for those segments that fail the handshake.)

    This provides the basis for a post-scarcity economy, at least for digital -- and perhaps more broadly. The digital goods and services are not scarce, but the willingness of consumers to sustain producers is scarce. The invisible handshake governs an allocation of that willingness to sustain. To/from each consumer according to his willingness and ability to pay. To/from each producer according to their ability to create realized and recognized value.

    As noted in the prior post, this handshake enables a kind of first degree price discrimination. Conventional economics views first degree price discrimination as economically efficient, but not feasible. But what emerges from the handshake is a new kind of first degree price discrimination that is feasible and agreed to by each consumer.

    A kinder, gentler -- and more sustainable -- market

    This enables a broader sense of economic value than is generally addressable in conventional markets.
    • The invisible hand allocates supply and demand for particular items at particular times, thus narrowing consideration, in ways that ignore sustainability and other aspects of social value ("externalities"). Many have sought to broaden the focus of producers with notions of "Creating Shared Value" (CSV) and triple or quadruple bottom lines, that factor in financial, environmental, and social (and other) dimensions.
    • The invisible handshake creates prices that reflect not just financial value, but whatever dimensions of social value the producer-consumer pair want to reflect in the dialogs about value. There is no need for added bottom lines, or separate CSV objectives -- CSV is integral to the handshake. 
    This handshake is not on a transaction price, but on a continuing relationship. As a result, it fundamentally changes the our economics from working across markets without regard to past or future, to taking a longer term view:
    • It is the lack of past and future that create many of the problems in conventional market economics. We balance supply and demand in the short term, with no direct way to factor in long-term consequences for the individual parties, or society as a whole. Addressing those "externalities" by bolting on special measures (taxes, subsidies, etc.) is artificial and very problematic.
    • With the invisible handshake, the whole focus is on a relationship over time.  Value shares may fluctuate in the short term, but move toward a desirable sharing over the life of the relationship. Sustainability can factor in directly.
    Instead of trying to find a price, we need to find a broader kind of agreement. Instead of agreeing on price. we price out of agreement.  That agreement will naturally vary from person to person and from time to time. The effect of this "invisible handshake" is to draw producers and consumers into a more cooperative, balanced, and productive relationship.

    Now that our digital market has been shattered to bits...

    Moving from here to there will take learning and adjustment by all market participants. But digital has already shattered the market for content to bits -- shouldn't we take advantage of this opportunity?

    Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
    To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things Entire!
    Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
    Re-mold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

    -- Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald translation


    ----

    *There is of course the important case of ad-supported digital services that take no share of wallet. It seems clear that this is not sufficient to support all digital services but it will remain an important contributor. The handshake process can factor in the value of ad viewing as one part of the compensation that offsets any monetary price, and thus takes less share of wallet. In fact, any aspect of value (attention paid to ads, personal information made available for sale, referrals, etc.) can be factored in as credits into these dialogs about value.

    **Of course conventional set prices (or any pricing scheme at all) will also effect some kind of allocation of wallet. But is there any economically sound rationale? -- it is arbitrary, crude, and not personalized (as the pricing demon would suggest), and thus results in significant deadweight losses (notably the value not provided to those who would benefit from and pay fairly for it).
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    Monday, May 4, 2015

    Harnessing the Demons of The Digital Economy

    The dynamics of networked commerce combined with the essentially free replication of digital offerings has created devilish problems that our current economics has yet to tame.  Sellers have no clear rationale for setting prices and consumers feel they should not have to pay anything at all.

    One way to step back and re-think this is to do a "thought experiment," as has proven valuable in the development of science. Some notable thought experiments involve imagining benevolent "demons" with special powers and/or knowledge: Laplace's demon, with its perfect knowledge of the state of the universe and all its natural laws, and Maxwell's Demon, with its ability to individually sort hot from cold molecules.* Maybe we cannot build such demons, but thinking about them can clarify concepts and possibly point to approximations that can be built, or can suggest directions for looking outside the box.

    The demon I propose is one that can power a system of commerce.  Imagine a demon that has perfect ability to read the minds of buyers and sellers to determine individualized "value-in-use" -- the actual value perceived and realized by each buyer, at each stage of using a product or service -- such as songs or articles or e-books, either in a subscription or item-by-item context.
    • This "value demon" knows how each buyer uses the service, how much they like it, what value it provides them, and how that relates to their larger objectives and willingness/ability to pay. It understands the ever-changing attributes of current context, where the value of a given item can depend on when and how it is experienced.
    • Furthermore, this demon can determine the economic value surplus of the offering -- how much value it generates beyond the cost to produce and deliver it.
    • The demon can go even farther, to act as an arbiter of how the economic surplus can be shared fairly between the producer and the consumer. How much of the surplus should go to the consumer, as a value gain over the price paid, and how much of the surplus should go the producer, as a profit over the cost of production and delivery.
    This commerce demon could thus serve as the brains of a system that sets prices that are adaptive and personalized -- to set a price for each person, at each time, that is fair to both the producer and the consumer.

    Imagine we could build an e-commerce system, with advanced programming and data that worked as an artificial intelligence version of this demon. We could build services like Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, or a newspaper subscription that were priced by the demon. Prices would not be pre-set by the seller, but would be set dynamically by the demon at levels that would be fair and acceptable to both the buyer and seller.

    (This takes us in a direction very different from the ideas from the early days of e-commerce of "bots" that would negotiate prices for us. The demon is in some ways analogous to a bot, but instead of negotiating a single transaction, it works at a higher level that centers on value, not just negotiating power.)

    With such a demon setting prices, we could reap the cornucopia of goods and services that the infinite replication of digital offerings promise ("information wants to be free") while still providing fair profits to the producers ("information wants to be expensive"). Every consumer who is willing to pay more than the marginal cost of production would be able to buy, while those who get and can pay for significant value would pay appropriately higher prices.

    This may sound pointlessly fanciful, but thinking about it can suggest new approaches that are practical.**

    One such approach, the FairPay architecture I have been describing in this blog, works very much like an approximation of this demon. Not perfect, but still workable as an emergent process that uses simple procedures and dialogs to approach what this demon knows. Details are in other posts and the sidebar, but some basic points:
    • FairPay shifts our perspective from individual transactions to a series of transactions over time in a relationship.
    • Instead of the invisible hand of supply and demand pushing from outside, it brings an invisible handshake in which the buyer and seller agree to cooperate to find a fair basis to exchange value.  This can inform a new balance of powers, based on "dialogs about value." 
    • The buyer's power is to set prices for a current transaction -- "fair pay what you want" -- with the understanding that he agrees to be fair, and that this is a temporary privilege that the seller will continue only as long as he agrees the prices set by that buyer are usually fair.
    • The seller's power is to decide whether to continue these attractive offers, or not. That gives the buyer full buy-in on all prices, but motivates him to keep up his end of the bargain.
    • Additional data feeds in to the process, including the seller's suggested price to each buyer, the buyer's reasons for pricing higher or lower, and all of the increasingly rich individual details that digital system instrumentation can make available about usage levels, patterns, and contexts, to inform and validate these dialogs.
    • Based on all of that, the seller tracks each buyer's fairness rating, much like a credit rating. Consumers will warm to the idea of this pricing privilege, and will seek to protect their fairness rating just as they do for credit ratings.
    The result is an emergent process that seeks to discover the price, just as the demon understands it. The approximation may start out being quite crude, but digital sellers can afford some unprofitable cycles in the early stages of each relationship, if that soon leads toward convergence on fair prices. As experience is gained, this will become a science of Big Data and predictive analytics -- one that works to serve both the buyer and the seller.

    So this FairPay process acts as an engine that approximates what the demon knows. It draws out the knowledge of the buyer, encourages truth-telling, nudges that with the views of the seller, and provides a context for the dialogs about value that lead to a fair split between the producer and consumer surplus. Such a process can totally change the game of selling digital stuff, for more profit, and more value to society.


    [Update 5/18/15]
    To consider the broader implications of this new approach, see this sequel: An Invisible Handshake for The Digital Wealth of Nations.


    **[Update 8/3/15] 
    I should have added that there is a proven way to approximate my value demon -- but one that has been restricted to high-end, sophisticated industrial markets, and generally ignored in most other markets. As described in a 2014 HBR article, companies like GE are increasingly realizing that set prices are not best for either the supplier or the customer --and for large industrial products or services, it is better to develop custom prices very much along the lines of what the demon knows. These "value-based" pricing or "outcomes-based" models work well for such industrial equipment where a cooperative team of both producer and customer can negotiate not a specific price, but a method of analyzing value as actually achieved by the customer in use, and then basing the price on that after the data is known. Just as the Internet of Things is making that more widely applicable, FairPay points to how a lightweight, heuristic variation on that theme can work for computer-mediated mass consumer markets..



    -------
    *Expanding on these demons, and the two well-known examples...
    • Laplace's Demon, has been influential in philosophy and physics, as one who has perfect knowledge of both the current state of the entire universe, and all the laws of nature. Thus Laplace's demon can look forward or backward to derive the exact state of the world at any past or future time. This is relevant to questions of free will versus determinism, and to quantum uncertainty.
    • Maxwell's Demon, has been influential in thermodynamics, as a gatekeeper in a box with two chambers separated by a small hole with a door. The demon can control the door to allow high speed molecules to go from left to right only and low speed molecules to go from right to left only, thus making the left side get colder while the right side gets hotter. This would violate the second law of thermodynamics.
    (There are reasons why both are infeasible, but thinking about them sheds light on why that is.)

    Adam Smith's invisible hand can be thought of as a similar demon that helps balance supply and demand in a market at a given point in time. As we know, Smith's demon actually works fairly well for many markets.

    Economics has generally ignored my demon, but it has been lurking in the background. First degree price discrimination was defined by Pigot as applying this kind of information in idealized monopoly situations -- but has been viewed as not realistic for reasons such as arbitrage (those who bought cheaply could resell to others so they did not have to pay the full amount they would be willing to pay).**

    I propose that the workings of FairPay enable something much like first degree price discrimination, but instead of all the surplus going to the monopoly, my demon shares it fairly between producer and consumer.  And since resale of digital services can often be made impractical, the arbitrage problem generally does not apply.

    [Update 1/1/16]
    A nice bit on how Einstein's thought experiments changed the world is Walter Isaacson's "Light Beam Rider" piece in the NY Times (10/30/15).
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    Thursday, March 19, 2015

    Beyond the Deadweight Loss of "All You Can Eat" Subscriptions

    In the continuing conundrum of pricing digital content, "all you can eat" unlimited subscriptions have become the latest thing to try/hate. We see it in music, with the Taylor Swift withdrawal from Spotify, and in e-books, with angst over Amazon Unlimited and other subscription services.

    At a most basic level, isn't it clearly perverse that:
    • I pay the same for Spotify whether I listen for 2 hrs/mo or 12 hr/day?
    • I pay the same for Amazon Unlimited whether I read 1 book/mo or 1/day?
    • I pay the same for Netflix whether I watch 2 hrs/mo or 12 hrs/day?
    • I pay the same for NYTimes.com whether I read 20 stories/mo or 50/day? 
    The problem is obvious on the surface, but the fix has not been at all clear.
    • All you can eat (AYCE) encourages wasted resources ( a "deadweight loss" as economists say*), and this is especially painful to the creators of content (musicians and authors) who find themselves getting pennies for their hard-earned work. 
    • But all the conventional set-price alternatives are also very problematic -- especially for digital content, which can be replicated at near-zero cost, to economically serve almost anyone who sees value in it.  
    The problem is that we have had no efficient way to price for a value that varies from person to person and from time to time.  For example:
    • AYCE under-prices to heavy users, and overprices to light users. 
    • Set-prices of any kind underprice to those who most value an item or are most able to afford it, and overprice to those who find limited value or have limited means.  
    This results in a deadweight loss to our economy -- a loss to society -- because the set price excludes the large numbers of potential consumers who would gladly pay less, and thus would (1) obtain value and (2) generate a profit to the seller.

    This is partly a matter of usage volume.  Pricing for usage has always been a problem (think of long distance phone bills, and now cellular data), but now it is far more widespread and problematic for products and services that involve significant costs of human creation but low cost of replication. Many have identified the need** to find new business models, but with little clear direction as to how.

    I suggest that this derives from an underlying blind-spot -- we are stuck in our habit of thinking that prices should be set by sellers, rather than embracing the new dynamics of networked e-commerce that make it practical to dynamically set individualized prices (see my earlier post, "So Last Century...").  The new FairPay pricing architecture promises to move us to a new economics, by setting prices that correspond to a particular individual's usage context and value received. This has long been an economic ideal (perfect price discrimination), but FairPay shows how the digital world offers a new way to approach this ideal.

    Pricing for value

    When you think about what is economically efficient, and what is fair to both parties, it is clear that prices should correspond the the value of the experience. Value is not just how much you eat, of what and when, but how good is it -- a particular and ever-changing mix of how tasty, exciting, nutritious, timely, sustaining, ...and how costly to provide.

    Businesses can exploit other models, but that is often unfair to consumers, and wasteful to society as a whole. But pricing for value is challenging, and so is rarely done for consumer services. Let's look at some of the commonly used options, all of which are good for some of the people, some of the time -- but not for others.
    • All You Can Eat subscriptions (AYCE at a set price -- all the items you want, time-limited to a meal, a month or whatever) -- This is simple and easy, but has all of the unfairness and inefficiency noted above. (These and variants are often referred to as paywalls.)
    • Usage-related subscriptions (set prices for units of usage, a form of a la carte) -- This can correlate well to usage as one important aspect of value, and thus be much more efficient and fair, but it is very unforgiving, and so consumers rightly shy away from it, especially if they are price sensitive. We all know of the old horror stories of teenagers getting surprised by cell phone bills for thousands of dollars, and are always very conscious of "the ticking meter," Many variations on this have been applied, with mixed results, One variation is set prices for different tiers of usage (common with cellular data and previously for voice, but little used for content).  This avoids surprises within one tier of usage, but confronts the user with a cutoff, after which they suddenly must jump a high price hurdle to the next tier for one more unit, or stop until the next cycle. An improvement on that adds "rollover minutes" in which unused usage credits are carried over into later periods (a doggie bag). These are workable and moderately efficient with regard to usage, but get complex, and still present the consumer with set-prices (and potential surprises) that may or may not match to the value to that user. (FairPay draws on aspects of these models in a more forgiving form.)
    • Unit purchases of items (essentially AYCE at a set price, of a single reusable item, forever) -- This is also simple and easy, and good for those who want to make full use of a given item (song, book, video, app, etc.) but tends to make it prohibitive to use very many items.
    • Freemium subscriptions (AYCE at a set price, split between a free tier of items/services, and a paid tier) -- This is just a variant version of AYCE that serves two customer segments, but only obtains fees from one. This has become very popular as perhaps the best solution readily available for many digital services, such as for Spotify, newspapers (metered or "soft" paywalls), and many others. But freemium is still a form of AYCE, with all its inefficiency, and it still has a set price, so the challenge of what price, at what level, remains (see post "Beyond Freemium..."). Multi-tier freemium models also exist, and add the efficiency of usage tiers or feature tiers to the basic idea of free+paid options. But still the tiers and prices are pre-set, and still do not adapt to the fact that value varies in many dimensions other than just quantity of usage. As to deadweight loss, freemium reduces some of that, by providing some value to consumers of the free tier -- but it fails to provide the incremental value of the full service, or the revenue that many of those free tier users would be willing to pay. (FairPay offers similar benefits to freemium, in a more flexible and potentially efficient form.)
    There are also many variants and other pricing strategies that deserve consideration, but have yet to prove widely effective for consumer markets. These may apply to items or subscriptions, and some involve a shared platform supporting multiple vendors.  (Of course many other models exist -- including other combinations of these techniques.)
    • Micropayments (small set prices for each small unit of content) -- This variant of usage-related subscriptions has a long history of conceptual appeal, but has the same problems of being unforgiving, with the nagging fear of the "ticking meter." (To ease the logistics of handling small payments to many vendors, this is often applied across multiple vendors with a common payment platform, such as in app stores and in multi-publication subscription services.) 
    • Pay What You Want (PWYW) (AYCE of a single item, forever, but the consumer sets the price) -- This gained fame after Radiohead offered a PWYW album, and has proven successful in some markets such as indie music, games, and e-books (see post "...Still Crazy..."). While it has been well established that most people will pay, and many will pay fairly or even generously, it is still very iffy as a sustainable business model. Its success so far has been greatest in special promotions, such as Radiohead, or Humble Bundle. (A limiting factor has been that most PWYW offers are in a single transaction setting -- FairPay shifts this the setting to that of an ongoing relationship.)
    • Pay What You Want "post-pricing" (PWYW, where the consumer sets the price after experiencing the items) -- This "post-pricing" has been little used so far, but has a big advantage in that it let's the user set a more generous price because they have confidence that they will not be disappointed -- and it signals greater trust and confidence from the seller, to further encourage generous pricing. (One established form of post-pricing is shareware, but with only the choice between a set price or zero. Again a limiting factor has been the single transaction setting, unlike the ongoing relationship setting that is central to FairPay.)
    • Tip-jars or Microdonations (blending PWYW with micropayments) -- These have gained limited traction as a way for small sellers to pool voluntary payments using a common payment platform, such as for blogs. (Again, while pooled, this is purely voluntary, and not wrapped into a relationship-building structure as FairPay is.)
    • Value-based or Performance-based pricing (collaborative post-pricing based on actual results of use) -- Near the ideal of pricing for value with perfect price discrimination.  As currently done, this has been generally impractical in consumer markets, but it has proven very effective and efficient for big-ticket industrial items or services, where the parties can agree on how to measure value and share in the value surplus that the product/service creates, and can do the analysis that takes. The advent of Big Data is making this more feasible and effective in a wider variety of businesses. (As explained below, FairPay provides a way to extend this to mass-customized consumer markets.)
    What is fair to me is not fair to the next guy

    While the deadweight loss of All You Can Eat is a big problem, usage pricing can only solve part of the problem of pricing digital, even if it could be done perfectly. Even at the same usage level, a price that is fair to me may not be fair to the next guy. What if I get great value from x number of items because they contribute significantly to my business, investments, health, hobbies, social life, cultural interests or whatever, but someone else may find some value in them, but not as much? Alternatively, what if the perceived value is the same (such as for health, or to a sports fan), but I am affluent and can easily pay a high price for that value, but someone else is a student, retired, or disadvantaged?

    Simply charging based on units of usage still has the problem of the Long Tail of Prices. A number of consumers (the short "head") who get high value or have high ability to pay could potentially be enticed pay more, and should do so to help support the creation of this value (much as patrons of cultural creation do). The "long tail" of very many consumers who would get less value or have less ability to pay, and so do not buy, might happily pay a lower price, and thus contribute added profit to the creator of that value. It is well know in economics that it is most efficient to sell to everyone who will pay a price greater than the marginal cost of production (which for digital products is nearly zero) -- if you can get those willing to pay more to do so.

    Units of usage are just not an adequate measure of value. (Why is it that very expensive gourmet restaurants serve very small portions with few complaints, while mass-market restaurants feature large portions -- and, of course, "all you can eat" buffets?)

    The efficiency of FairPay

    Essentially FairPay takes the principles of the value-based and performance-based pricing that work increasingly well in B2B markets, and applies them in a lightweight and intuitive form to consumer markets. In doing this, it can flexibly blend features of many of the models described above in a new paradigm. Post-pricing is used in combination with aspects of freemium and PWYW, along with post-pricing, in a new way that gives buyers and sellers evenly balanced power to collaborate over time to set individualized fair prices in "dialogs about value" that can consider all of the relevant dimensions of value and fairness.

    For more specifics of how FairPay changes the game to enable personalized pricing based on individual value see the other posts on this blog, and the FairPay Web site.
    • The previous post digs into the specific example of music, providing a good example of the subtleties that FairPay can address, but music is a hard business to change because of the role of entrenched labels and other intermediaries that make it difficult for those selling music to experiment with new pricing models (especially after Steve Jobs got them to buy into iTunes!).
    • Very much the same analysis can be done for other industries that have fewer structural constraints. For example, journalism, such as newspapers and magazines, may be much more amenable to FairPay in that there are no powerful middlemen to stand in the way of pricing innovation. Several prior posts address that (such as those relating to NYTimes, NYTimes Premier, Bezos and the Post, and Omidyar, and I expect more to follow). Briefly, there are the same issues of widely varying value propositions, and the need to get readers to pay a fair price to support the expense of high-quality journalism.
    • Much the same applies to many other businesses, including e-books, video, apps, games, and other digital services. One post explores the rich nuance that FairPay can offer in dealing with the widely varying value of Travel Guides.
    Of course it does no good to set individualized prices if those asked to pay more than others will not agree to do so. That is why perfect price discrimination has been so elusive. What is different about FairPay is how it nudges those who can and should pay more to agree that it is fair that they do so. That is addressed in the examples just referenced, and more fully in posts on Seller Control and on Making People Want to Pay You.

    Isn't it time to move beyond our deadweight losses and try a pricing model that addresses the dynamics and context-dependency of digital so that as many people as possible pay a fair price? ...A model that enables a product or service to by provided to everyone who is willing to pay more than the very little that it costs -- and enables the provider to gain a fair profit from all of them?



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    *Not being expert in economic theory, I am not sure if all of the economic inefficiencies described here are strictly considered deadweight losses (and wonder how well economic theory addresses the new varieties of exchange enabled by digital) -- but it is such a great term!  My point is they are inefficiencies (in theory and in practice) -- and that many sales that would create an economic surplus for both buyers and sellers do not happen because of these kinds of pricing inefficiencies.

    Two interesting items on this theme are:
    ...And don't start me on why I have to pay $4 per month for ESPN even though I never watch it!

    **The music business has been one of the hardest hit by this and most outspoken about the need for new business models (as addressed in the prior post). For example, see recent pleas for new business models for music in Harvard Business Review, from an ex-Rhapsody exec, and in Music Industry Blog posts here and just earlier.



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