Information goods (IG) will have the increasingly significance in the New Economy; the right pricing schematics and the efficient way of circulation will enable IG to be fully utilized. Because of their unique characteristics, however, no widely accepted pricing models are established, and few studies on information pricing from the empirical perspective exist. This paper aims at examining the user attitudes to different pricing systems for various information goods. I find that in general people prefer dynamic pricing to fixed pricing in trading IG, although buyers prefer the dynamic pricing more than sellers do. Buyers like Reverse Auction and Dutch Auction more, while sellers like Reserve Auction more. But the preferences are contingent on different products and situations. With EFA,...[ Read more ]

Information goods (IG) will have the increasingly significance in the New Economy; the right pricing schematics and the efficient way of circulation will enable IG to be fully utilized. Because of their unique characteristics, however, no widely accepted pricing models are established, and few studies on information pricing from the empirical perspective exist. This paper aims at examining the user attitudes to different pricing systems for various information goods. I find that in general people prefer dynamic pricing to fixed pricing in trading IG, although buyers prefer the dynamic pricing more than sellers do. Buyers like Reverse Auction and Dutch Auction more, while sellers like Reserve Auction more. But the preferences are contingent on different products and situations. With EFA, I identify five dimensions - price, characteristics of information goods, efficiency, convenience and format - to explain the adoption of pricing systems. Implications for theoretical modeling and practical applications are discussed, and further research is outlined.

Keyword: Information Goods, Online Auctions, Consumer-to-consumer (C2C), Systems Structure