Willingness to Buy Digital and Physical Books: Impact of Price Fairness Perceptions on Different Price Levels and Content of Books

Purpose – This paper aims to explore how consumers perceive price fairness when physical and digital books have different price levels, when they are priced equally, as well as when their content differs and how this affects the intention of consumers to buy and their willingness to pay. Methodology – Three experiments were conducted with different manipulations of the price level, including discounts and zero price with references to favorite vs. “anonymous” books, and different content. Findings and implications – The results demonstrate that, when it comes to an increase in price, a higher intention to buy and willingness to pay are attributable to physical to a greater extent than to digital books. The price fairness mediation effect is observed for digital books, leading to the conclusion that consumers are more sensitive to the prices of digital goods from a fairness perspective. Content effects were observed with regard to book purchase decisions: classic books are associated with a higher intention to buy when in physical form. Limitations – Low procedural price fairness mediation effects could be attributed to small sample sizes. The setting required respondents to think about their favorite content (book), thus attributing more value to it irrespective of the form, which diminished price fairness perception effects on purchase intention. Originality – The paper demonstrates the effects of price fairness on consumer intention to buy and willingness to pay for digital as opposed to physical books under different price presentation conditions, in terms of comparisons (one offer vs. both offers) and differences in content (long, classic read vs. short, escapist read).