Impacts of personal characteristics on the choice of music consumption mode: purchasing CD, downloading, streaming, and piracy

Abstract

This study compares consumer characteristics affecting four modes of music consumption–purchasing CD, downloading, streaming, and piracy. Based on consumer decision-making styles framework, multivariate regression is conducted to investigate the significance of the relative power of each characteristic across the consumption patterns. Findings of a South Korean survey show that price seekers are sensitive about spending their money on the purchase of CDs. Trend followers rely more on streaming, which provides easy access to the newest music, and consumers who have a higher level of possessiveness prefer to buy tangible CDs. The quality sensitive consumers are likely to download music. Meanwhile, the amount of time required to access music is not significant in predicting any mode of music consumption.