Some time ago, I wrote about different sites where you can personalize your music. Bas Reus, a student of information sciences at the University of Amsterdam, recently finished his master's thesis on customization in the internet economy, comparing different custom music services.
Now, Bas posted his entire thesis online. It is a great study on a good methodological and scientific level. His main research question is the relation between digital products, mass customization and variety. Building on earlier literature, Bas formulates a number of hypotheses on the relation between variety, the level of customization, the consumer search costs.
The case studies on Last.fm and Pandora show that variety does not necessarily leads to more complexity and higher search costs. On the contrary, Last.fm and Pandora try to increase the interaction between the site and the user to consumers to discover new digital products – and in turn benefiting from referral fees when users purchase this music.
His conclusions:
- Instead of lowering the average interaction length of time (as suggested often in the literature), it may be desirable to increase the average interaction length of time between the supplier and the consumer.
- Instead of lowering search costs for consumers, it is desired for them to discover as much as new products as possible.
- The thesis also stresses the "theory" of the long tail, where abundance of information is something to strive for, benefiting users. But this abundance needs useful customization possibilities to minimize the search costs for consumers.
Context information:
- Older post on personalization of music.
- Bas Reus' Blog
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